rill, " I 1 . ' 
It ' t . )[ '' ' 

§;:•■ ^'v - 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



0DDDS3TbEfll 



"^p- * o » o ' ^^ 











•^^' / "V^^V' \''^^V^ "v^^v' "" 






'^*\'?»'^^ %*-"^*'*^^'^ %''*^*y^ %'*"^*'%°'^ .. "^"^^ 




THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 



90 longitude 85 Weat from 80 OrCTPirich 75 




New England 
Settlement 

East of the Mississippi River 
before 1860. 

New Englnnl Settlement 
L.' . J Al] Othir Settlement 



/ 









THE EXPANSION OF ^| 
NEW ENGLAND 

THE SPREAD OF NEW ENGLAND SETTLEMENT 

AND INSTITUTIONS TO THE 

MISSISSIPPI RIVER 

1620-1865 



BY 

LOIS KIMBALL MATHEWS 

INSTRUCTOR tN HISTORY IN VASSAR COIiLEGB 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

(Ibe Riber?ibe ptt0 Cambrilioe 

1909 



f4 



COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY LOIS KIMBALL MATHEWS 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published Novemher iqoq 



'CI,A;>5145G 



5jn ^emortam 
G. R. M. 



PREFACE 

The present study is an attempt to untangle, from the 
complex skein of our national history, the one strand of 
the New England element. In attempting to set forth 
clearly and convincingly one phase of our development, 
it may seem that a loss of proportion and of perspective 
has resulted. The study makes no pretensions to being 
either complete or exhaustive ; but it is sent out with the 
hope that it may at least suggest some new points of 
view. 

The initial impulse to the work, and much of its spirit, 
are due to Professor Frederick J. Turner, of the Uni- 
versity of Wisconsin. The actual beginnings of the study 
were made at Leland Stanford Junior University during 
1903-04, in a seminar conducted by Professor Max 
Farrand, now of Yale University. The next stage of 
development was reached under the guidance of Profes- 
sor Edward Chanuing, resulting in the presentation of 
the study in thesis form in partial fulfillment of the 
requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at 
Radcliffe College. Since that time it has been expanded 
and almost entirely reconstructed, to be published in its 
present form. The author has in preparation another 
study designed to supplement this one, having as its 
theme New England settlement beyond the Mississippi 
Kiver, and in the South since 1865. 

It would be impossible for the author to acknowledge 



viii PREFACE 

all the suggestions and aid of which she has availed her- 
self in this study ; but she wishes to express her especial 
indebtedness to those above mentioned with whom so 
much of the work was done, and to Professor Lucy M. 
Salmon, to Mr. Payson J. Treat, and to Professor J. 
Leverett Moore. 

L. K. M. 

Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York. 
February, 1909. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. Introductiox 1 

Unique character of American History — Due to large areas of unoccu- 
pied land in the west — Causes of pioneering from England to New Eng- 
land — Religious — Political — Economic — Social — From New England 
to the west — Character of the frontier — Mutual distrust between frontier 
and settled community — Illustrations of New England influence. 

CHAPTER II. The Beginnings of an American Frontier . 11 

Settlement of Plymouth — Causes of settlement — Character of people 

— Of settlement — First offshoots of Plymouth — Other Massachusetts 
settlements before 1629 — Settlement of New Hampshire — Settlement of 
Maine coast — Settlement of Massachusetts Bay — Character of settlement 
to 1635 — Settlement of Connecticut — Removals from Massachusetts 
Bay — Emigration from England — Character of settlement — Settlement 
of Springfield — Settlement of Rhode Island — Pequot War — Type of 
later wars — Services it rendered future pioneering — Settlement after 
Pequot War — New character of settlement — Extension of settlement in 
older colonies — Connecticut — Massachusetts — Counter-cun-ent, and in- 
ducements offered in new settlements — Expansion of New Hampshire 

— Government of New Hampshire towns — Growth of Maine — Growth 
of Rhode Island — Settlement of Long Island — Government of Long 
Island towns — Overflow into Westchester County, New York — Charac- 
ter of frontier line in 1660 — Restriction on removal from frontier line — 
Character of New England in 1660 — Common desire for religious free- 
dom factor in settlement — Shown in plan of town — Also in union of 
church and state — The prevalence of town-meeting idea — Tradition of 
popular education established. 

CHAPTER III. The Influence of Indian Warfare upon 

THE Frontier, 1660-1713 43 

Revival of emigration from England under Charles II — Increasing ill-will 
of Indians — New charters granted after 1660 — Connecticut — Rhode Is- 
land — Acquisition of New Netherland — Proclamation of Duke of York's 
laws — Grant of New Jersey to Berkeley and Carteret — Rapidity of set- 



X CONTENTS 

tlement 1660-1675 — In Massachusetts — Maine and New Hampshire — 
Khode Island — Connecticut — Long Island — New Jersey — Conditions in 
1675 — King Philip's war a great blow to all the colonies except New Jer- 
sey and New York (including Long Island ) — Character of period 1075- 
1713 — Almost continuous warfare the outgrowth of European struggles 

— Peace only an armed truce — Precautions against reckless extension of 
the frontier — Conditions in Maine and New Hampshire — Massachusetts 

— Rhode Island — Connecticut — Emigration to Westchester County, New 
York — To New Jersey — To Dorchester, South Carolina — The founding 
of a second New England college — Estimates of population ahout 1713 — 
Differentiation of coast and frontier. 



CHAPTER IV, Forty Years of Strife with the Wilderness, 

1713-1754 76 

Character of the Peace of Utrecht — Effect of the peace upon settlement in 
Massachusetts, especially Worcester County — Hampshire County — Berk- 
shire County — Speculation a marked feature of the period — Especially 
in Massachusetts — Maine — New Hampshire — Expansion of settlement 
in Massachusetts — Maine — New Hampshire — Vermont settlement be- 
gun — Rhode Island, merely growth in density of population — Connecti- 
cut, new towns and new parishes — Long Island, growth in population — 
Putnam, Delaware, and Orange Counties in New York — Settlement in 
Georgia at Medway — Movement for public improvements, — roads, 
bridges, and ferries — Conflicting tendencies of the period 1713 to 1754 — 
Lack of opportunity for investment because of English parliamentary pol- 
icy — Causes of repression of tendency to expansion — Fear of Indians — 
Difficulty in obtaining clear titles — Decreasing quantity of good land 
available — Differentiation between coast towns and interior settlements 
— England's attitude one of distrust, as in financial matters — Preparation 
for the Seven Years' War. 

CHAPTER V. The Frontier in War and in Peace, 1754- 

1781 108 

Dangers of the early part of the period 1750-1781 — Effect of the French 
and Indian War upon the frontier line — Rush of settlers to the frontier 
after 1758 — Western Massachusetts — Western Connecticut — New 
Hampshire — Maine — Vermont — Effect of the Proclamation of 1763 
upon extension of settlement — Pennsylvania settlements — Delaware 
Company's towns — Susquehanna Company's towns — Organization of 
town of Westmoreland — The Lackaway Settlement — The Phineas 
Lyman colony in West Florida — The Nantucket emigration to North 
Carolina — Effect of the Revolution upon expansion — Character of the 




CONTENTS 

war as a frontier struggle — Contraction of the frontier line — Com- 
bined with its extension — Pouring out of the tide of emigration after 1780 
— Change in conditions after the Revolution — Poverty leads to neglect of 
churches and schools — Rise of movement for academies — Founding of 
Dartmouth College — New ideas of liberty lead to conflicts between 
proprietors and settlers — Vermont and her neighbors — Increasing differ- 
entiation between coast and frontier. 



CHAPTER VI. The Beginning of the Great Migrations 
FROM New England toward the West, 1781-1812 . . . 139 

Impetus to emigration after the Revolution — Lines of expansion — To 
New Hampshire — To Maine — To Vermont — These three states from 
1812 to 1850 — Character of settlement 1781 to 1850 — General obser- 
vation on northern New England — Founding of Bowdoin College — Dif- 
ferentiation of pioneers at the beginning of the great western emigrations — 
New England in Pennsylvania — Founding of Alleghany College — Great 
emigration to New York — East of the Hudson River — Enormous expan- 
sion of central and western New York — The Phelps-Gorham tract — Re- 
presentative towns — Representative settlers — Characteristics of New 
Englanders in New York — Tendency to establish public worship — Dif- 
ference between New England and New York Congregationalism — Re- 
vival of missionary spirit in New England — Transplanting of the town- 
meeting — Its combination with the county system — R^sum^ of New 
York settlement — Timothy Dwight's testimony — Shifting of interest 
after 1812. 



CHAPTER VII. The Planting of a Second New England, 

1787-1865 171 

Pressure upon the frontier-line just after the Revolution — Essential 
difference between method of settlement in Ohio and the thirteen original 
states — Indian treaties entered into by the general government to make 
Ohio habitable — The mode of settlement in the Western Reserve — First 
New England settlement in Ohio — Character of Marietta settlement — 
Typical pioneers of Marietta — Beginning of settlement in the Western 
Reserve — James Kilbourne and his " Scioto Company " — Character of 
settlement in the Western Reserve — Settlement of Granville — Effect of 
War of 1812 upon the frontier line — Development of Ohio after 1815 — 
Timothy Flint's observations — The Oberlin colony — Its offshoots in 
other states — Character of Ohio churches — Ohio's educational policy — 
Reservation of township sixteen in every section — Development of public 
school system — Western Reserve College — The town and county system 
in Ohio — R^sum^ of Ohio settlement to 1865. 



xii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER VIII. The Joining of Two Frontiers : Indiana 
AND Illinois, 1809-1865 196 

General character of settlement iu Indiana and Illinois — Growth of set- 
tlement in Indiana before 1816, as a territory — After 1816, as a state — 
General location of New England settlement — New England counties — 
New England towns — Typical pioneers — Influence of the New England 
element upon education in Indiana — Upon churches — Upon local 
government — Illinois settlement up to 1818 — Sectional antagonism in 
Illinois — Mutual distrust of southern settlers and New England element 
— Causes of this distrust — Climax of the antagonism about 1840-1842 — 
Great influx of New England immigrants after 1830 — Effect of the Black 
Hawk War — Literature on emigration scattered broadcast at this time — 
New England colonies in Illinois — Indifference to fertile prairie soil 
shown by first settlers — Distribution of New England element in Illi- 
nois — Shown by Congregational churches — Illinois College a child of 
Yale — Triumph of the township system — Schools founded by New Eng- 
land settlers. 

CHAPTER IX. The New Englanders as State Builders : 

Michigan and Wisconsin, 1820-1860 221 

Settlement of Michigan and Wisconsin taking place chiefly in period 
1825 to 1850 — Reasons for slow progress of settlement in Michigan — 
Great influence of completion of Erie Canal and rise of steamboat naviga- 
tion — Successive stages of law-making in Michigan, showing changing 
stages of settlement — Character of Michigan settlers — Arrival of New 
England element — Routes of travel from Detroit — Type of pioneer — 
New England colonies, especially Vermontville — Influence of Marietta, 
Ohio, settlers — Nativity of governors of Michigan — Michigan schools — 
Normal schools — The state university — Olivet College — Congregation- 
alism in Michigan — The Michigan town-meeting — Wisconsin almost a 
wilderness in 1826 — Lead-mining district first settled — Influence of 
Black Hawk War in promoting settlement — County and township system 
both in existence in territorial days — Final triumph of New York system 
— Character of New England settlement in Wisconsin — Racine County — 
Founding of Beloit — Schools in Wisconsin — Congregationalism in Wis- 
consin — Character and nativity of prominent citizens — Resemblance be- 
tween Michigan and Wisconsin. 

CHAPTER X. Two Centuries and a Half of New England 

Pioneering, 1620-1865 250 

R^sum^ of New England pioneering — Character of the emigration — 
Factors which have been operative in New England emigration — Trans- 
planting Puritan institutions — Reaction of the frontier upon the older 
parts of the country — Changing character of New England population. 



LIST OF MAPS 

New England Settlement east of the Mississippi River before 1860 

Frontispiece 

New England Settlement, 1629 Facing 15 

Settlements on the Connecticut River, 1637 21 

New England Settlement, 1637, just before the Pequot War Facing 23 

New England Settlement, 1660 " 35 

New England Settlement, 1675, just before King Philip's War " 56 
New England Settlement, 1677, just after King Philip's War " 57 
New England Settlement in New York and New Jersey, 

1700 " 66 

Dorchester Colony, South Carolina, 1695-96 68 

New England Settlement, 1713 Facing 70 

New England Settlement in New York and New Jersey, 

1750 " 95 

Dorchester Colony, South Carolina, and Medway Colony, 

Georgia, 1752 96 

New England Settlement, 1754 Facing 99 

New England Settlement in New York, New Jersey, and 

Pennsylvania, 1775 " 125 

New England Settlement in the South, 1781 " 127 

New England Settlement, 1781 " 136 

New England Settlement, 1812 " 140 



J- 



^.^ LIST OF MAPS 

New England Settlement in New York, New Jersey, and 

• -1 rrrvA .... Facing 151 

Pennsylvania, liW 

New England Settlement in New York, New Jersey, and 

*' 1S5 
Pennsylvania, 1800 

New England Settlement in New York, New Jersey, and 

" 159 

Pennsylvania, 1810 

New Enc^land Settlement in New York, New Jersey, and 

..." 168 
Pennsylvania, 1820 

New England Settlement in Ohio, 1790 

" 178 

New England Settlement in Ohio, 1800 

*• 182 
New England Settlement in Ohio, 1810 

Emigration of Friends from North Carolina to Tennessee, 

. ..." 199 
then to Indiana 

New England Settlement in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, 

« 206 
1820 

New En-land Settlement in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and 

"210 
Michigan, 1830 

New England Settlement in the Old Northwest Territory, 

« 236 
1840 

New England Settlement in the Old Northwest Territory, 

« 246 
1850 



THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 



THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTIOIS' 

The history of the spread of settlement in the United 
States is the story of an ever-retreating wilderness, an 
ever-advancing frontier. From the first straggling vil- 
lages stretched in a thin, wavering line along the At- 
lantic Coast, their inhabitants the frontiersmen of the 
England they had left behind, bands of pioneers, re- 
cruited by successive generations, have penetrated slowly 
and steadily into the wilderness. It is this feature of 
American history that is unique, — that from 1607 until 
about a decade and a half ago there had always been a 
frontier in the United States, a " far west " where areas 
of cheap land were large and plenty, where there were 
few or no inhabitants. The far west has receded before 
the homeseeker since the time when hardy Englishmen 
began their towns on the James River and on Massa- 
chusetts Bay, — then the far west to their comrades in 
England, — until now the term is applied only to the ter- 
ritory beyond the Rocky Mountains. With the retreat 
of this receding region, the frontier has moved on also, 
the one marking the outer confines of the other. It was 
with the vanishing of the frontier in 1892, when prac- 
tically all the government land had been marked off into 
farms or cattle ranges, and every county in the United 



2 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

States had a few inhabitants, that the first period of our 
history really closed. That period has been subdivided 
and studied in its political and constitutional aspects ; 
but until recently what seems to be its real character, its 
unique quality, has been ignored/ Yet this character 
has often furnished the key to some whole period. The 
frontier and the builder of it — these have been potent 
factors in the growth and the development of the United 
States ; for the pioneer has been influenced by the insti- 
tutions and the character of his old home in England or 
upon the coast, and has in turn brought to bear upon 
those older regions influences which originated in his 
Western home. The conservatism of the established 
community and the radicalism of the frontier have acted 
and reacted upon each other, producing finally the com- 
promise between the two which makes the individuality 
of the United States. 

The causes of frontier-making have been many and 
varied. The first settlers came from England with 
mingled motives, of which the most potent were prob- 
ably the religious difficulties which became acute under 
Stuart rule.^ Certain it is that the desire to worship God 
in his own way led many a Puritan to Massachusetts 
Bay in the days of James I and his son Charles. It is 
significant, too, that emigration to America fell off when 

* Professor Frederick J. Turner, of the University of Wisconsin, has 
done more than any other person to call attention to the significance of 
the frontier in our history. To his suggestive articles in the Atlantic Monthly, 
the American Historical Review, and elsewhere, I desire to acknowledge my 
indebtedness at every stage of my work. 

=> See G. L. Beer, The Origin of the British Colonial Systems, 1578-1660 
(New York, 1908). Chapters i and ii give a discussion of the causes for 
emigration from England. 



INTRODUCTION 3 

Puritanism triumphed under Cromwell. So closely, how- 
ever, were religious and political questions associated in 
the minds of the opponents to royalty, that devotion to 
democratic ideals and to a form of government where 
middle-class interests were uppermost was curiously 
intermingled in the minds of our ancestors with their 
ideas of democracy in church as well as in state. At all 
events, the first settlers in New England were radicals 
in religion and in politics, — and they emigrated, as 
many a radical among their descendants has done. 

Economic difficulties also forced many a pioneer to 
America. In the seventeenth century, when times were 
still " hard " in Europe, as a result of the monetary and 
economic disturbances brought about by the great influx 
of gold and silver from the New World, many a younger 
son betook himself to a region where his fallen fortunes 
might be retrieved. The shifting of industry in Eng- 
land under Elizabeth and James had made many a peer 
envious of the newer aristocracy which owed its title 
to the wealth acquired through trade and commerce, 
and had contributed not a little to a desire on the part 
of the younger men to try their fortunes across the sea. 
As knowledge of the New World increased, its oppor- 
tunities seemed more varied and more alluring. Chances 
for agriculture were great where limitless tracts of land 
lay unappropriated, and ownership in land was most 
highly regarded not only as a road to wealth, but as the 
basis of social and political position. Opportunities for 
trade and commerce also offered possibilities for making 
money; — the fur-trade was long a rich field for an 
energetic young Englishman, and mines of gold and 



4 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

silver have always loomed large among the probable 
resources of a new country. 

Besides these tangible causes for emigration, there 
were the more subtle but no less real ones of restless- 
ness and discontent with the life of settled communities. 
The Wanderlust in the Anglo-Saxon blood had been 
potent in urging Englishmen to a part in the Crusades 
and later to voyages of exploration and discovery. Now 
it assumed the form it had taken in earlier centuries, 
and impelled not only individuals, but families, and 
groups of families, to emigration over seas. Love of 
adventure, curiosity concerning unknown lands, dreams 
of prosperity impossible under their present condition, 
— all these have played a part in recruiting the ranks 
of pioneers to the New World. 

' The motives which impelled the second generation of 
frontiersmen, sons of the settlers upon the coast, to lead 
the march to the interior, have been very like those of 
their fathers. Here again the desire for economic, reli- 
gious, and political freedom has played its part, for the 
tendency of those portions of the country first peopled 
has been to grow conservative, and even to crystallize, 
as England had seemed to have done when the first 
emigrants left her shores. As the towns on the coast 
grew slower to change character and institutions, the 
more radical spirits began to chafe, and to turn to newer 
sections where they might be unhampered by either tra- 
dition or habit.' They have not, however, been wholly 
divested of either, and have turned as their fathers had 
done to the civilization of their birthplace for prece- 
dents, compromising, conceding, and readjusting because 



INTRODUCTION 5 

of new conditions and new elements, and thus shaping 
institutions which were neither wholly new nor entirely 
old. Again and again, with each succeeding generation, 
has the process been repeated, with England as the 
background, the older colonies as the "middle distance," 
and the newest of our states as the foreground. The 
story of the frontier is not merely a study of settle- 
ments ; it is also a study of institutions transplanted and 
transformed, the old ones influencing the new ones, the 
new ones reacting upon the old, making the latter 
broader and more flexible. In this way the spirit of 
radicalism so conspicuous among the pioneer's motives 
has been immeasurably helpful to the country as a whole. 
But along with the pioneer's radicalism and some- 
times excessive individualism have gone other motives, 
such as the desire for greater material prosperity, which, 
as has been said, had urged on many of the first emi- 
grants from England. The great stretches of fertile 
lands, cheap and plenty, have lured many a settler to 
the West. The extensive tracts of timber land have 
offered opportunities for wealth, as have also the mines ; 
and the well-nigh limitless cattle ranges, together with 
the salt marshes, are mentioned again and again by 
pioneers as a great inducement to emigration. Nor is the 
desire for prosperity solely a selfish one ; it is usually 
bound up with the hope that the children may have 
advantages denied to the fathers and mothers, and be 
spared the hardships of frontier life. This desire is again 
an impelling force in each succeeding generation, urg- 
ing on the unsuccessful together with the ambitious and 
the venturesome. 



6 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

With these causes and motives, what shall be said of 
the character of the frontier? In the first place, there is 
the tendency to radicalism in all matters. The conserv- 
ative element always tends to remain in settled portions 
of the country, where conditions are fairly determinate, 
and where results may be estimated roughly at least. 
Dissatisfaction in a conservative does not readily become 
so acute as to impel removal to an isolated, unknown 
region, to begin Hfe anew in unfamiliar surroundings. 
It has been upon the whole the radical who has moved, 
the conservative who has stayed. Moreover, the pioneers 
have usually been men and women not beyond the 
prime of life, and most frequently they have been 
young, with the faults and virtues of youth, — frank- 
ness, impulsiveness, courage, impatience over restraint, 
hope well-nigh unlimited. All these qualities have been 
needed if the hardships of frontier life were to be over- 
come, and all of them have been exemplified again and 
again in the march of settlement across the continent. 

Certain other characteristics stand out clearly. In- 
dependence of thought and of action along religious, 
moral, and economic lines has always been a significant 
feature of frontier life. While the Congregational 
Church was still dominant in New England, descendants 
of the Puritans were living peacefully in Wisconsin 
towns, where at least seven denominations had churches, 
and in lieu of an organization of their own, sometimes 
allied themselves with Methodists or Baptists or Pres- 
byterians. Without any judiciary at their command, the 
early settlers often took such crimes as horse-stealing 
into their own hands, and lynched the thief with little 



INTRODUCTION 7 

formality. In the field of economies, colonial ideas of 
the relation existing between England and her subjects 
across the Atlantic seemed to the British Parliament as 
crude and unscientific as the Western agitation for free 
silver in 1896 seemed to New England conservatism. 
Such independence has frequently been the outcome 
of another trait, — excessive individualism. Inability to 
adapt one's self and one's ideas to the prevailing order 
of things in any community has made many a " chronic 
pioneer," who has emigrated at short intervals from one 
settlement to another, until old age has overtaken him. 
One finds such men to-day in the least thickly populated 
portions of the West, — men who found California 
stifling in 1855, and perhaps settled down reluctantly in 
northern Montana in 1890. Western Canada is at this 
moment illustrating the same point. With the accumu- 
lation of wealth, this individualism often gives way to 
a self-complacency born of a pride concerning hardships 
overcome, — the pride of the " self-made man." Such 
an attitude of mind is easily comprehended by any one 
who has watched a Western city develop from a few log 
cabins to a commercial centre numbering its inhabitants 
by hundreds of thousands, all within a half-century. It 
is this complacency which has bred the provincialism 
common in new communities. 

On the other hand, side by side with this excessive 
individualism exists a strong social sense, which is one 
of the most attractive characteristics of pioneer life. 
Such a sense is illustrated in the house and barn rais- 
ings of any frontier community, where all the settlers 
for miles around come to give their help without pay, 



8 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

but with the tacit understanding that such assistance 
"will be repaid in kind if necessity demand it. Quilting- 
bees, log-rollings, and corn-huskings, where the whole 
country-side assembled, have marked the social life of 
all frontier communities. The survival of such a spirit 
can still be found at harvest time in Iowa or Minnesota, 
where the neighborhood comes together first at one farm, 
then at another, to assist in threshing. 

All these characteristics tend to disappear with settled 
economic and social conditions, and radicalism gives way 
to conservatism, provincialism breaks down before edu- 
cation and travel, and the new community tends to grow 
more and more like the old. Yet there are differences 
which are never leveled down, which yield a wholesome 
opposition most necessary to progress. From the begin- 
ning, elements from all the various parts of the country 
have mingled, and the result has been to produce types 
which are reminiscent of their origin, though they do 
not exactly reproduce it. Most of the colonial pioneers 
were offshoots of a common English stock, from the 
same social class in Devonshire or Somersetshire or York- 
shire or some other English county, but new environ- 
ment and changed conditions altered them in their trans- 
Atlantic homes, till the different local divisions took on 
different characteristics, and the Virginian was easily 
distinguished from the man of Massachusetts, -and the 
Pennsylvanian from either. Within New England itself, 
the Vermont type was unlike that of eastern Massachu- 
setts. Pushing in beyond the confines of New England, 
in New York and the Northwest, these sons of Massa- 
chusetts and her neighbors were thrown with pioneers 



INTRODUCTION 9 

from the Middle States and from the South, and the 
population became further differentiated from that of 
any of the older states, while the institutions reflected 
earlier ones found in all. Yet with care one can untangle 
certain strands in the skein, and the object of this study 
is to ascertain roughly what part New England has 
played as a frontier-maker ; — how she has founded 
towns and institutions not only within her own borders, 
but far beyond the Hudson and the Alleghanies. 

Accident cannot explain the homogeneous character 
of the institutions of the New England States ; for de- 
spite differences in the character of the people, the insti- 
tutions they have wrought bear a striking similarity 
one to another. The reason is not difficult to understand 
when one has traced the pioneers from Connecticut and 
Massachusetts who builded together to make New Hamp- 
shire, and who united with frontiersmen from New York 
to frame Vermont's constitution. Why should western 
Massachusetts bear a closer resemblance to Connecticut 
in its attitude toward political questions than it does to 
Boston and the other commercial coast towns? The 
reason is not hard to find when one has, for instance, 
traced the settlers of Berkshire County in Massachusetts 
to their first homes in Norwich, or Hartford, or Weth- 
ersfield in Connecticut. Going farther afield, one works 
back from the distinctly New England forces which went 
to the building of Newark in New Jersey, or of South- 
ampton on Long Island, to these same northeastern col- 
onies which furnished the first freemen to both. And 
far away upon the shore of Mobile Bay, or at Natchez, 
or at Whitman College on the Pacific slope, when there 



10 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

is found a Comstock, or a Carman, or a Denton, one 
needs only to go back to Connecticut, or to Massachu- 
setts, or to their neighbors, to discover the birthplace 
of the bearer of the name. Is it by chance that the 
Michigan town-meeting bears a striking resemblance to 
that of Massachusetts ? Is it a superficial catchword that 
denominates Western Reserve University a "younger 
Yale " ? Why should a town in the Willamette valley 
of Washington have white houses with green blinds set 
gable-end to the street around a public square? Is it by 
accident that there should be found in southern Califor- 
nia an intangible but distinct New England individual- 
ism and hospitality grown less reserved under a tropical 
sun ? If we find New England civilization, changed yet 
recognizable, from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific, 
there must be found an explanation of it in a study of 
the spread of settlement and institution outward from 
the first straggling villages about Massachusetts Bay, — 
in a history of the march of the pioneer from Plymouth 
to the Columbia River. 



CHAPTER II 

THE BEGINNINGS OF AN AMERICAN FRONTIER 

The earliest settlement in New England embodied many 
of the features which characterized later enterprises of 
the same sort. In the first place, the very name of the 
settlement New Plymouth was reminiscent of that Eng- 
lish port from which the Mayflower had set sail for the 
New World. One has but to place the maps of Eng- 
land and New England side by side to find many such 
illustrations of the effort on the part of early settlers 
to perpetuate in a new country the local names of their 
former homes. Moreover, Plymouth in New England 
was founded by transplanting part of a church ^ — deacon 
and members — from Leyden (which had been but a tem- 
porary home) to America. So closely were church and 
state allied in the minds of these emigrants in search of 
religious independence, that membership in the one was 
identical with membership in the other. Before they 
landed to begin their town, the settlers drew up, in the 
cabin of the Mayflower, a compact which all the men 
signed, whereby a "civil body politic" was formed, 
under whose crude constitution laws to resfulate local 
concerns might be made. At the same time, however, 
loyalty to the king and dependence upon him in larger 
concerns were clearly set forth. Deacon John Carver was 
chosen governor by popular vote of the " freemen " (as 
the signers of the compact were called), and with Car- 



12 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

ver was associated one assistant. As lias been said, church 
and state were closely united, and the town government 
managed not only the business, for example, of admit- 
ting new freemen, but such matters as regular church 
attendance as well. About the church centred much of 
the life of Plymouth, and the records of parish affairs are 
in outline, at least, a history of the town itself. From 
the first days of the settlement care w^as taken that the 
education of children should not be neglected. Where 
the sermon occupied so large a portion of the service 
and was the medium through which theology was taught 
to old and young, an educated people was a necessity. 
Moreover, one outcome of the Protestant revolt all over 
Europe had been to force dissenters to defend the indi- 
vidualistic tendencies of their creed, and be prepared to 
argue out to their conclusion independent view^s upon 
religion. Thus education became a first consideration, 
and Governor Bradford noted in 1624 that, although 
families taught their own children and there was as yet 
no common school, it was not because the need of edu- 
cation was not realized. 

Though accident had brought the emigrants of 1620 
to the shores of Massachusetts, the deserted cornfields 
and abundance of running water which they found un- 
doubtedly had weight in determining where the site for 
the infant settlement should be. Huddled close to the 
sea the little town grew up, with its cluster of houses 
and its church, while round about it, running back to- 
ward the interior, lay the farming lands. The plan to 
hold these tracts in common was given up shortly ; in 
1624: to each freeman was assigned one acre as a per- 



THE BEGINNINGS OF AN AMERICAN FRONTIER 13 

manent holding, and three years later twenty acres "were 
allotted to each. By this time a number of new names 
appear on the records, for thirty-five emigrants had ar- 
rived in the Fortune in 1621, and about sixty in the 
Aniie in 1623. Originally supporting themselves by 
agriculture and fishing, the pioneers soon found trading 
with the Indians a profitable addition to these employ- 
ments, and in 1627 determined to erect a fur-trading 
station on the Kennebec River in what is now the state 
of Maine. Plymouth attempted few such enterprises, 
however, and the expansion of the settlement continued 
to be restricted to a comparatively small and compact 
district about the original town. This process of expan- 
sion may be well illustrated in the case of Scituate, where 
some emigrants, newly arrived from Kent, in England, 
made their home in 1630. These newcomers voted in 
Plymouth, and there they went to church. They com- 
plained six years later, when the number of freemen was 
sixteen, that they were too crowded, and that their lands 
were "stony and hard to be subdued." Even the salt- 
marshes and good pasture-lands which had first attracted 
home-seekers seemed to them inadequate, and they pe- 
titioned to be allowed either a larger grant of land, 
or permission to remove to Marshfield. The former 
plan was adopted, and shortly Scituate was incorporated 
as a separate town, with its own independent church. 
The settlers in Marshfield and in Duxbury found the 
Plymouth church inconveniently far away, and in 1632 
formed separate organizations. A little later they, like 
Scituate, were incorporated separately, though all three 
were members of Plymouth Colony. 



14 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

While this sort of expansion was taking place, other 
small towns, independent of Plymouth in their origin, 
had obtained a foothold up and down the shore. Hull, 
Weymouth, Braintree, Quincy, Salem, Lynn,^ and Mar- 
blehead had all been founded in 1629, their inhabitants 
engaged in farming and fishing. The sites of these towns 
were selected because of good water or reasonably fer- 
tile soil, but so small were they for several years, that 
the establishment of churches came only after their suc- 
cess was assured. The same condition is illustrated in 
the early New Hampshire towns, — Strawberry Bank 
(the Portsmouth of a later time), Oyster River (Durham), 
and Dover, all of which were in 1623 villages scattered 
along the shores, with a few fishermen and farmers in 
each. 

Still farther to the east there were planted before 
1630 the trading-post of Plymouth Colony on the 
Kennebec, Cape Porpoise, Piscataqua, Damariscotta, 
and a trading-post at Pemaquid, around which grew up 
gradually a settlement that after the granting of a 
patent in 1630 became a flourishing town. Sagadahoc 
made a feeble beginning in 1623, while Sheepscot 
grew in seven years to a population of fifty families. 
Across the river from the New Hampshire towns of 
Dover and Strawberry Bank lay the villages of South 
Berwick and York ; Saco and Portland came into ex- 
istence, and farther on St. George was planted. 

The New England coast in 1629 was, then, dotted 

• It is interesting to note the location of the English towns represented 
in some of these homes. From the eastern counties of Norfolk and Essex 
come Lynn and Braintree. Weymouth is in Dorsetshire, Hull in York- 
shire. 



72 Longitude West 70 from Greenwich 08 




xrxr^' 



New England 

Settlement. 

1629 



THE BEGINNINGS OF AN AMERICAN FRONTIER 15 

here and there with little fishing and farming villages ; ^ 
the only settlement of any size was Plymouth, with its 
outlying farms and little towns split off from the older 
one. But in that year began the great migration from 
England to America due to the acute discontent engen- 
dered by the policy, political and ecclesiastical, of the 
second Stuart king. The vanguard consisted of three 
hundred and eighty emigrants, who arrived in Salem 
and Lynn under the leadership of John Endicott, the 
whole enterprise based upon the charter of the Massa- 
chusetts Bay Company. This company had organized 
as a trading corporation under a patent of Charles I, 
which bears a striking resemblance to the mercantile 
charters of that day, such as the one granted to the 
East India Company. By the terms of the Massachusetts 
Bay Company's charter, the members of that " body 
corporate and politique " were to elect annually a gov- 
ernor, a deputy-governor, and eighteen assistants, who 
were to meet at least once a month in a court to regu- 
late colonial affairs, and with all the freemen were to 
meet four times a year in a general court to admit free- 
men and make laws for the regulation of civil and 
religious matters. Once a year this General Court elected 
of&cers for the next year. It was in accordance with 
such terms that the Endicott Company arrived. The 
next year no less than one thousand people came to the 
shores of Massachusetts, and began the towns of Boston, 
Roxbury, Watertown, Medford, and Dorchester, besides 
contributing new settlers to Lynn and Salem. From 

* See map opposite this page. All the settlements made to 1629 are 
plotted on the map, although their names are not inserted. 



16 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

that year dates the rapid growth and prosperity of the 
Massachusetts settlements, which, beginning as had the 
Plymouth Colony, with little hamlets huddled close to 
the sea, soon found their farming-lands too small for 
the needs of an increasing population which made agri- 
culture the chief means of Hvelihood. To meet the 
demand for larger fields and pastures, settlement was 
begun in Newtowne (the Cambridge of our day) in 1631. 
When a company arrived in 1635 from Hingham in 
England, bringing their minister with them, the new- 
comers made their home a new Hingham, attracted by the 
heavy timber with which the district was well supplied. 
In the same year families moved to Ipswich and Glou- 
cester, thus adding to the number of towns north of 
Boston. Ipswich offered advantages in facilities for 
farming, fishing, and pasturage, and filled up so rapidly 
that four years later the town was considered too thickly 
populated, and families from Ipswich, together with new- 
comers from England, — forty families in all, — mi- 
grated as a church, taking their minister with them, to 
Newbury. Gloucester, on the other hand, had only here 
and there a bit of arable land, and had once before been 
abandoned by the few fishermen who had tried to make 
homes there. It is indicative of the rapid growth of the 
settlements up and down the coast that so undesirable 
a site should now be chosen ; it is also significant that 
out of eighty-two persons named as proprietors of the 
soil between 1633 and 1650, two thirds ultimately 
migrated to newer towns to try their luck under more 
favorable conditions. 

One other illustration will show the mode of expan- 



THE BEGINNINGS OF AN AMERICAN FRONTIER 17 

sion to 1635. Brookline (called Muddy River) was 
taken up as an outland for Boston and Cambridge, 
since the tract abounded in good soil, well-grown tim- 
ber, and large tracts of marsh land and meadow.* Here 
the cattle were pastured during the summer, the farmers 
bringing them into the older towns after harvest, and 
making no permanent settlement until the end of the 
decade. Upon the whole, then, the first fifteen years of 
New England settlement show hamlets built up along 
the coast, with the gradual extension of farming-lands 
into the interior, which lands later became the sites for 
new villages. 

Each of the older towns had its own church, and about 
this church centred the social and religious life of the com^ 
munity. Church members only were allowed to be free^ 
men and take part in legislation, so closely was church 
allied with state in the minds of the Puritans. Each town, 
moreover, had its own " common," and the grouping of 
the houses to face this plot of ground, with the farming* 
lands completely surrounding the group, was already a 
marked characteristic of the New Enoj-land settlement. 

The planting of Concord illustrates a new phase of 
expansion from the coast toward the interior. As has 
been said, the new settlements up to 1635 had been 
pushed back toward the interior only as extensions of 
coast towns. In that year, however, the General Court 
of the Massachusetts Bay Colony having made a definite 
grant of a tract six miles square to twelve or fifteen 
grantees, these men and their families founded the town 
of Concord, the first inland settlement in New England. 

* Rev. John Pierce, " Brookline," in Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., 2d ser., ii, 141. 



18 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

That the General Court recognized the hardships likely to 
be the lot of these frontiersmen, as well as the desirability 
of such an outpost, seems probable from the fact that three 
years' exemption from taxes was a feature of the grant, 
as came to be the case oftentimes in all the colonies. 

The break in the frontier line having once been 
made, pioneering in the wilderness became general. The 
Plymouth Colony had in 1633 erected a trading-post on 
the Connecticut River, through the efforts of William 
Holmes, a representative of the " Plymouth Trading 
Company." John Oldham, of the same Company, had 
made expeditions up and down the river from the trad- 
ing-post, and had brought back glowing reports of the 
rich intervale lands in the Connecticut valley. When 
certain of the inhabitants of the coast towns, chafing 
under what seemed to them the narrowness of the 
Wiuthrop-Cotton administration of Massachusetts Bay, 
determined to migrate for a second time, it was very 
natural that the vicinity of the Plymouth trading-post 
should be chosen as their goal. A few adventurous men 
had gone in 1634 as a vanguard, making their way by 
water, and had built huts upon the site of Wethersfield, 
in which they managed to live through the winter. The 
Rev. Thomas Hooker, pastor of the Newtowne (Cam- 
bridge) church, argued that permission to remove be 
given his congregation, on the ground that their scanty 
lands were too cramped for the number of cattle they 
kept, and also prevented their friends in England from 
joining them. He urged the fertility of the soil upon the 
Connecticut as a great inducement for removal, alleging 
also that new settlements would effectually shut out the 



THE BEGINNINGS OF AN AMERICAN FRONTIER 19 

Dutch ; and added that " the minds of his people were 
strongly inclined to plant themselves there." After a 
long and heated debate, leave was given to the malcon- 
tents to depart, and emigration began, first to Wethers- 
field, then to Windsor, and finally to Hartford, the 
pioneers calling the towns (until 1637) Watertown, 
Dorchester, and Newtowne from their homes on Massa- 
chusetts Bay. The pioneers of Windsor, by purchasing 
their right of settlement from the old Plymouth Com- 
pany in England and from the Indians, acquired the 
clear title, which was one of the dearest possessions of 
the New England farmer of that day, as it is of his 
descendants. One hundred in number, they made the 
overland journey of fourteen days ; through swamp and 
forest, following Indian trails, they moved as an organ- 
ized church, taking their two reluctant ministers with 
them.^ The second company, bound for Wethersfield, 
went in all probability by water from Boston, perhaps 
arriving before their companions who were bound for 
Windsor.^ The third colony, under the leadership of the 

1 See Dr. H. R, Stiles, Ancient Windsor (ed. of 1859), 17, where he says 
that many of the Dorchester people were engaged in the fur business, and 
that the furs which Hall and Oldham had brought to Boston in 1633 made 
the discontented much more eager because of the opportunities the fur- 
trade offered. 

Stiles is sure these first settlers went along the north border of Pom- 
fret on their way from Boston to the Connecticut. See Ancient Windsor, 
footnote on p. 26. Also Bowen, Woodstock, 13. Also Benjamin Trumbull, 
History of Connecticut (ed. of 1818), i, 64-66, who says that the ministers 
had to move because their whole church and congregation had left for 
Connecticut. 

' Stiles, Ancient Windsor, 28. Also Trumbull, Connecticut, i, 59, 60. 
Trumbull accounts for the future litigious character of the Wethersfield 
people thus : "The brethren of the church at Wethersfield removed with- 



20 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

Rev. Mr. Hooker, went also as an organized church. 
They, like the Windsor pioneers, about one hundred 
strong, driving their one hundred and sixty head of cat- 
tle before them, made their way overland for a fort- 
night, from Massachusetts Bay to Hartford.* 

Although they were still under the jurisdiction of 
Massachusetts (for it was only on that condition that 
they were allowed to go), the idea of local self-govern- 
ment was too firmly implanted for these Connecticut 
pioneers to give up the idea of courts of their own. Two 
men were elected from each of the towns for the trans- 
action of ordinary business, but for extraordinary occa- 
sions, such as deciding upon peace and war, and mak- 
ing Indian treaties, they were joined by three others from 
each town, thus forming so-called committees.^ For two 
years the freemen had but little voice in making the 
laws, save as they acted through their representatives. 
As in Massachusetts, church and state were closely 
united, the members of the one being the freemen of 
the other. 

out their pastor, the Rev. Mr. Phillips ; and, having no settled minister 
at first, fell into unhappy contentions and animosities. These continued 
for a number of years, and divided the inhabitants of the town, as well as 
the brethren of the church. They were the means of scattering the inhab- 
itants, and of the formation of new settlements and churches in other 
places." Ibid., i, 120. 

* One often wonders what became of the lands vacated by emigrants 
to newer towns. The lands which the Hartford settlers had left vacant by 
their removal were purchased by the congregation of Mr. Thomas Shep- 
ard, Mr. Hooker's successor in Cambridge, who had come with his people 
from England in 1634. Trumbull, Connecticut, i, 65. 

' Note the difference between this arrangement and that of Plymouth, 
where the freemen allowed only advisory powers to their representatives 
till the towns became four or five in number. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF AN AMERICAN FRONTIER 21 



The same year that the Massachusetts people moved 
to Connecticut saw the beginnings of a military post at 
Saybrook under the guidance of John Winthrop, Jr., 
son of the Governor of the Bay Colony ; thus towns to 
the number of four were scattered along the river before 
1636, when the reports of John Oldham, who seems to 
have been of an adventurous spirit, and had traveled far- 
ther up the Connecticut than any other white man, in- 
duced a company to remove to what is now Springfield. 
With one of the most promi- 
nent men of the colony, Wil- 
liam Pynchon, as their chief 
man of affairs, a number of 
families from Roxbury, Mas- 
sachusetts, took leave of their 
friends on the coast, to begin 
a new home far out in the 
wilderness/ The rich inter- 
vale land offered great oppor- 
tunities for raising farm pro- 
ducts, the Connecticut River 
afforded transportation facili- 
ties, and the towns farther down the river were near 
enough to furnish some protection in case of Indian 
attacks. To Pynchon himself the beaver-trade was an 
alluring prospect, and from the first he engaged in it to 

* When John Cable left Springfield, in 1641, he sold his house and lands 
to the town for the sum of £40, to be paid in three installments, — in 
money if possible, if not in money, then in goods, to be agreed upon by 
Cable and the towns-people. The next year the town sold this property 
to one Thomas Cooper for £25. See First Century of Springfield, i, 153- 
155. 




SETTLEMENTS ON THE CONNECTI- 
CUT RIVER, 1637. 



22 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

his great profit. A significant feature of the founding 
of Springfield was the signing of a compact by the set- 
tlers, after the manner of the Plymouth pioneers. By 
the first resolution they expressed their intention of 
providing themselves with a minister as soon as possi- 
ble ; by the second, they limited the number of families 
who should be admitted to the town to forty, with the 
privilege of enlarging it to fifty if they chose.* 

South of Plymouth Colony, a settlement was begun 
in Rhode Island in 1634 at Cumberland, and two years 
later Roger Williams, with a company of friends from 
Salem, began his town of Providence. Finding himself 
out of harmony with the "close corporation " of Massa- 
chusetts Bay, he purchased lands of the Indians, and, 
with other disaffected persons, established a new home, 
where religious and civil peace might be maintained 
without interference from their neighbors on the north. 
New emio-ratious from the two Massachusetts colonies 
added to the population, until in 1638, two years after 
the planting of the new settlement, thirteen heads of 
families shared in the first division of land.^ Thus Rhode 
Island seemed an asylum for malcontents in other parts 

1 E:ieh settler was to have a house-lot on the west side of the mala 
street, eight rods wide from the street to the river ; the same width iu 
meadow in front of his house ; a wood-lot of the same width; and, where 
practicable, an intervale lot on the west side of the river, as nearly as pos- 
sible opposite his house. The first comers were, however, young unmarried 
men, less than twenty of those who came in the first five years bringing 
families with them. See First Century of Springfield, i, 19. The first town 
government was not representative, for all the freemen discussed matters 
in town meeting ; only in 1644 was authority delegated to a board of se- 
lectmen. See ibid., 23. 

* W. R. Staples, Annals of Providence, 17-40. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF AN AMERICAN FRONTIER 23 

of New England, as all New England seemed to be for 
the disaffected in England itself. 

Although the Indians had never been very desirable 
neighbors, hostilities did not break out until 1637. At 
that time the frontier line extended in ragged fashion 
from the Kennebec River to the mouth of the Con- 
necticut.^ Inland, there were five outposts on the Con- 
necticut River.^ Springfield lay farthest north, while 
Concord marked the farthest extension to the north- 
west, and Taunton (in the Plymouth Colony) with the 
Rhode Island towns was comparatively isolated in the 
south. The Indians had resented what was to them the 
intrusion of the white settlers, and by petty annoyances 
visited upon immigrants moving overland or by sea had 
prepared the way for the outbreak of 1637. Had the 
Narragansetts joined the Pequots, the infant towns 
would in all probability have been wiped out of existence; 
but Roger Williams managed to hold his Indian neigh- 
bors in check, and upon the Connecticut settlers fell 
the brunt of the strife. Massachusetts and Plymouth 
responded to the call of their Connecticut neighbors 
for help, and a little intercolonial army fell upon the 
unprepared Pequots, administering such chastisement 
as not only exterminated the Pequots themselves, but 

* See map opposite. 

2 The population of the four Connecticut towns is thus estimated by 
Trumbull: "There were, at the close of this year [1636], about two 
hundred and fifty men in the three towns [Wethersfield, Hartford, and 
Windsor] on the river, and there were twenty men in the garrison, at 
the entrance of it. . . , The whole consisted, probably, of about eight 
hundred persons, or of a hundred and sixty or seventy families." See 
Connecticut, i, 68. 



24 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

freed the towns from further danger from Indian tribes 
for forty years. Those forty years gave such opportunity 
for growth in the number and strength of the towns, 
and for their extension inland, that, although they 
might suffer greatly from a war, no extermination of 
the white settlers was ever again imminent, as it had 
been in 1637. 

Besides affording peace and quiet for the towns, the 
Pequot War did even greater service in bringing to the 
knowledge of the Connecticut pioneers the fertile lands 
to the east and west of their own towns. As a direct 
result of the march of the army, the sites of New 
Haven and Fairfield were discovered, and the settlement 
of that part of the country followed immediately. A few 
settlers began New Haven in 1637; in 1638 came the 
Davenport and Eaton Company, which, after a pre- 
liminary agreement with the Indians by which the 
latter were to have the use of the land between New 
Haven and Saybrook, purchased in December a tract 
ten by thirteen miles.* This was by far the wealthiest 
company that came in early days to New England. 
The original settlers of 1636 were mostly from London, 
and were for the greater part merchants, hence they 
chose a place which would afford a convenient centre 
for trading.^ Several characteristics of the early New 

> Trumbull, Connecticut, 96-98, 99. New Haven was called Quinnipiack 
until 1640. The first purchase included East Haven, Woodbridge, Che- 
shire, Hamden, North Haven, Branford, and Wallingford, besides what 
is now New Haven. 

* By 1643 there were in the colony 122 planters, 414 persons in all. 
Barber, Hist. Coll of Conn., 134-137, also New Haven Col. Rec, 1638-49, 
90 £f. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF AN AMERICAN FRONTIER 25 

England settlers stand out in a study of the Davenport 
Company, in their attitude both towards England and 
towards the older Puritan towns on Massachusetts Bay. 
Charlestown and Newbury both made large offers to the 
Company as an inducement to live in their midst, but 
the newcomers were bent upon forming no entangling 
ties. They gave out that they were afraid of a general 
governor's being appointed for all New England, and 
that they wished to be " more out of the way."^ It seems 
quite clear that the leading spirits were determined to 
found a wholly new government, which should be 
modeled in both civil and ecclesiastical matters entirely 
upon their own ideas. 

Mr. Whitfield's company, which in 1639 settled Guil- 
ford, came mostly from Surrey and Kent in England, 
and chose land as nearly like that of their former 
homes as they could find. Country-bred, and farmers 
by occupation, with scarcely a mechanic among them, 
the arable lands about Guilford attracted their notice, 
and purchases were made for all the inhabitants. Every 
planter of the original forty, after paying his propor- 
tional part of the general expense incurred by laying 
out and settling the plantation, drew a lot of land in 
proportion to the amount he had expended, and to the 
number in his family. A church was gathered at once, 
and the town's history began. ^ 

' Trumbull, Connecticut, i, 96. 

2 B. C. Steiner, Guilford, 26-35. Also Trumbull, Connectiait, \, 107, 
108. Steiner thinks the church was gathered in 1643 ; Trumbull says it 
was begun with the town, with seven leading men as its first members. 
Henry White thinks the New Haven, Guilford, and Milford people had 
organized in England as they intended to settle in Connecticut. He says: 



26 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

In 1639 the first town was planted upon the Housa- 
tonic, — Milford. Here a company of four men was 
sent ahead to explore and make purchases for the plant- 
ers who were to take possession. The settlers came from 
the counties of Essex and York in England, with a few 
seasoned frontiersmen from Wethersfield. There were 
probably two hundred arrivals in the first year/ The 
spirit of unrest which had led already to the settling of 
just such towns as Milford drew twelve of its original 
settlers within a few years to either Southampton or 
Easthampton, Long Island; Newport, Rhode Island; 
Fairfield, Guilford, and Branford. Within a few years 
all these towns had settlers from Milford among their in- 
habitants. Another town where different elements min- 
gled was Stratford, which was purchased and settled in 
1639. It numbered among its pioneers one family from 
England, several from Roxbury, two from Concord, 
some from Boston, others from Wethersfield, and one 
from Milford. Such a settlement can hardly be called 
an offshoot of any one town; it is significant that it 
afforded a home to families which for one reason or an- 

*' Three of these plantations, New Haven, Milford and Guilford, were 
undoubtedly the result of a . . . united emigration and of a contiguous 
settlement. The agricultural portion of these emigrants came mostly 
from the three English counties of Yorkshire, Hertfordshire and Kent. 
It is not an improbable conjecture that before they left England they 
were arranged by these affinities into three companies — the Yorkshire 
men, for the most part, uniting with the London merchants and trades- 
men who settled New Haven — the Hertfordshire men forming the bulk 
of the company which settled Milford — and the Kentishmen going in 
a body to Guilford." "The New Haven Colony," in Papers of the N. H. 
Hist. Soc, i, 2. 

* Of the fifty-four freemen, forty-four were church members, and ten 
were not. Barber, Hist. Coll. of Conn., 230, 231. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF AN AMERICAN FRONTIER 27 

other had found their earlier settlements unsatisfactory, 
and thought to better their condition by moving out to 
the eda:e of civilization. 

After 1640 the Connecticut settlers formed smaller 
villages with great rapidity. Hartford people moved 
across the river, and lived where formerly they had had 
only fields. The excellent soil of Norwalk had drawn 
twenty families there between the time of the first purchase 
and the year 1651.^ Wethersfield, which had contributed 
settlers to Stratford, saw an exodus of about twenty fam- 
ilies to Stamford because of a church quarrel, one of 
several in that town which led to new settlements.^ New 
Haven, foreseeing expansion in the near future, had in 
1638 purchased the site of the future Branford ; the 
dissensions of the Wethersfield church led to its repur- 
chase in 1644 and its settlement the same year by fam- 
ilies from Wethersfield and from Southampton, Long 
Island. So strongly individualistic were these pioneers 
that they were constantly complaining of the burden- 
some yoke of the New Haven jurisdiction under which 
they lived, and longed to be absolutely independent. 

John Winthrop, the typical frontiersman who had 
begun Say brook and a plantation on Fisher's Island, 
was back of the project of settling New London, and 
thus opening up what was known as the " Pequot 
Country." Several persons came in 1646, but although 
the planters were actually in possession of lots, no grants 

' The purchase was made in 1640. Barber, Hist. Coll. of Conn., 389. 

' Henry White, "The New Haven Colony," in Papers of the N. H. Hist. 
Soc.f i, 4. Twenty-eight men went to Stamford in 1641 with their fami- 
lies ; in 1642 there were fifty-nine pioneers there. See Huntington, Stam- 
ford, 18-26. 



28 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

were recorded until 1647. In the next year the settle- 
ment numbered more than forty families; soon after, 
three more came from Wethersfield and seven from 
Gloucester, Massachusetts, the latter bringing their min- 
ister with them/ 

While new towns had been springing up along the 
rivers and coast of Connecticut, expansion had been 
going on rapidly in Massachusetts in much the same 
manner. Church quarrels proved an important factor in 
planting new settlements ; — for example, the nine fam- 
ihes who went to Sandwich on Cape Cod from Lynn,^ 
and the minister with his congregation from Scituate 
who beofan the town of Barnstable.^ When a few fam- 
ilies had begun homes, they were usually joined by 
others who came from various of the older settlements. 
Moreover, steady immigration from England continued, 
the newcomers having unallotted lands given them, as 
was the case with the company of sixty who came from 
Yorkshire in England, almost all of them weavers, and 
were given the tract where Rowley now stands. Other 
immigrants settled Sudbury, and still others, who came 
from Salisbury in England, kept one tradition of their 

' These are not all the towns settled by this time; they are merely in- 
stances of the nature of such settlement. Every town planted before 1660 
is, however, included in the map of settlement for that year. 

2 Lynn settlers also began the town of Yarmouth and the village which 
became South Reading. 

^ Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1st ser., iii, 15. It would seem that church quar- 
rels were a most fruitful source of new towns in Massachusetts as in 
Connecticut. Eastham owed its beginnings to a church difficulty in Ply- 
mouth, by which forty-nine persons removed to begin new homes. They 
scattered over the territory which is now included in Wellfleet, Orleans, 
and Eastham, the three towns dating from 1644 under the name of East- 
ham. See Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1st ser., viii, 165. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF AN AMERICAN FRONTIER 29 

old home in naming their new abode Salisbury. It is 
noted of each of these towns that they had a church and 
a minister within two years or less. 

The crowding of the coast towns also tended to push 
back the frontier. Cambridge, Charlestown, and Woburn 
all asked for new grants and received them.^ But so 
marked had become the tendency for the pioneers to 
scatter their farmhouses that as early as 1635 the Gen- 
eral Court of Massachusetts Bay Colony issued an order 
forbidding the building of any dwelling-houses more 
than half a mile from the " meeting-house," to insure 
greater safety. 

So rarely was a site chosen by pure accident, as Ply- 
mouth had been, that the founding of Edgartown, on 
Martha's Vineyard, seems worthy of note. Some immi- 

' Cutter, " Woburn," in Middlesex County (D. H. Hurd, ed.), i, 343- 
345. The grant of Woburn is so exactly a type of all Massachusetts town 
grants of that period that it ought to be described at length. Its bounds 
were fixed by the General Court, four miles square, the grant being made 
to seven men upon condition that within two years houses be erected and 
the settlement of the town under way. These seven men were to grant 
lands to any persons who wished to make homes upon their tract, and to 
admit these settlers to all common privileges of meadow and upland, ac- 
cording to the number of cattle and of persons in the family who could 
make proper use of the land ; but the tracts were not to be so large as to 
preclude other later comers from finding farm-lands. These seven men 
laid out the streets of the town and distributed the lands, giving those who 
lived nearest the church a smaller quantity about their houses and more 
at a distance; the poorest having a meadow lot of six or seven acres, and 
an upland lot of about twenty-five. No more than sixty families were 
to be admitted without leave. Lands still belonging to the town because 
imassigned were (after the English custom) held in common by all the 
citizens. Thus there was obtainable for every freeman severalty in land 
through his home-lot, and the sense of community of interest through the 
common lands. See Johnson, " Wonder-working Providence," in Mass. 
Hist. Soc. Coll., 1st ser., vii, 38 ff. 



30 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

grants bound for Virginia were driven by storms to this 
harbor, and because they were nearly out of provisions, 
there they decided to remain. They soon formed a 
church, and in 1642 were living comfortably — twelve 
families in all — in their new homes, maintaining them- 
selves by fishing and farming. 

That the search for good land was a most potent cause 
for emigration is well illustrated in the history of Lan- 
caster, called " Nashaway " in the early records, and 
" Prescott " in 1652. The productive soil and proximity 
to the Nashua River made the tract most desirable, even 
though Sudbury marsh lay like a barrier between it and 
the older towns. From its beginning as a trading-post, 
" Nashaway " was never wholly deserted. A new fea- 
ture of pioneering appears here in 1643-44, when the 
Nashaway Company, made up chiefly of Boston and 
Watertown men, was formed for the purpose of convert- 
ing the marshes into a mill power. This system of pro- 
prietors who might or might not be permanent residents 
of their grant is one which became common ; to these 
proprietors the General Court made the grant, which 
was merely a preemption right, not to take effect until 
the Indian title had been extinguished. These proprie- 
tors sold tracts to settlers, or admitted desirable persons 
to the town upon certain conditions. The plan was prob- 
ably not a speculative one at first, for land was to be had 
almost for the asking, and no one needed to buy at sec- 
ond hand from proprietors when one might get a grant 
at first hand from the colony. It was only when land 
was in greater demand because the most profitable por- 
tions had been taken that speculation began. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF AN AMERICAN FRONTIER 31 

Although the tendency to expansion was great in 
most quarters, it was sometimes difficult to induce settlers 
to go out to frontier towns. Salisbury had parted with 
a few families between 1645 and 1648 to begin the town 
of Amesbury, the new settlers continuing for twenty 
years to support and attend the Salisbury church. In 
1655 eighteen men signed an agreement as to town gov- 
ernment ; yet the population grew so slowly that in 1659 
offers of gifts of land to the oldest sons of families who 
would remove to Amesbury were used as inducements 
to new settlers to fill up the town. In 1666, when the 
town was organized, it contained only thirty-six freemen. 
The history of Framingham is similar. One family 
moved there from Sudbury in 1645 or 1646 ; a second 
in 1647 ; but in 1662 it was still spoken of as a " tract 
of waste land " and a " wilderness." The fact that it 
was on the old Connecticut path from Cambridge to 
Hartford was not a great enough inducement to help 
build it up ; and only in 1675 was it possible to support 
a church for its inhabitants, who had up to that time 
gone to Sudbury or to Marlborough every Sunday. 

New Hampshire grew very slowly. Settlers from 
England had made their homes in Rye in 1635. In 
1638 thirty-six men, under the leadership of Rev. John 
Wheelwright, withdrew from the Boston church and 
founded Exeter, while other adherents of Mrs. Hutchin- 
son and of Wheelwright, who came mostly from Lynn, 
settled Hampton the same year.^ Other settlers came to 

' For Exeter, see Bell, in Hammond, Town Papers, xi, 639. Also Dr. 
Samuel Tenney, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1st ser., iv, 87. For Hampton, 
then called Winnicumet, see Palfrey, Hist, of New E7igland, i, 515, 516 
(ed. of 1882). In 1639 there were sixty families here. 



32 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

the latter town from Newbury, and the town was from 
the first a cattle-raising centre of considerable import- 
ance. The only government established was municipal, 
for the inhabitants regarded themselves still as subject 
to the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. The Isles of Shoals 
proved too attractive a fishing-ground for their isolation 
to keep settlers away. Before 1641 the inhabitants of 
Hog Island had erected a meeting-house, and Gosport 
was a flourishing little village. In 1661 there were forty 
families on the eight islands, the majority of whom 
lived in Gosport. 

It was necessary for all these towns to be more closely 
united than they had been, and in 1641 they were or- 
ganized into four governments, — Portsmouth, Dover, 
Exeter, and Kittery (in Maine), — and were joined to 
Ipswich and Salem for purposes of jurisdiction. In 1643 
the three first named and Hampton were added to Salis- 
bury and Haverhill, to form the new county of Norfolk, 
Massachusetts, each retaining its own organization for 
local purposes.* 

The history of Maine settlements is scarcely more 
than a rehearsal of names and dates, for the records of 
the earlier settlements are most meagre, and one gathers 
only that a few fishermen and traders led a precarious 
existence in tiny villages along the coast. A few settlers 
from Exeter, New Hampshire, began the town of Wells 
in 1643, under the leadership of the Rev. John Wheel- 
wright, who had found Exeter as uncongenial as Boston 
and Lynn had been, and had quarreled over some reh- 
gious matters with a portion of his New Hampshire pa- 

» Belknap, Hist, of New Hampshire (ed. of 1784), i, 54-66, 100. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF AN AMERICAN FRONTIER 33 

risliioners. The inhabitants of Wells formed themselves 
into a regular proprietary organization, with thirty-five 
proprietors, and were in a few years made a town of 
York County by the General Court of Massachusetts/ 
But the villages in Maine continued small, and their 
records are quite uneventful. 

Rhode Island, too, grew but slowly. Portsmouth was 
settled in 1638 by Anne Hutchinson and her adherents ; 
within a few months they had quarreled among them- 
selves, and some, under the leadership of William Cod- 
dington, withdrew to Newport. These two settlements 
with Providence and Warwick^ were united in 1644 
under a charter obtained through the efforts of Roger 
Williams. But Coddington, with a faction of his own, 
managed to obtain a separate charter for Newport and 
Portsmouth in 1651, and a feud arose which lasted 
nearly ten years, and ended by the union of all under 
the old charter of 1644. From the beginning of her 
history Rhode Island represented excessive individualism 
and fanaticism, and the story of her early history is one 
of lack of harmony, and of civil and religious conten- 
tion. 

Before 1660, then, five of the present New England 
states had towns planted within their limits, and the 
two most populous ones, Connecticut and Massachusetts, 
had sent bands of pioneers up and down the coast, and 
far inland, to begin new settlements in the wilderness. 
But expansion did not cease at the borders of New Eng- 

* Williamson, Maine, i, 293, 351. 

^ Rhode Island Hist. Soc. Coll., i, 11. North Kingstown was settled in 
1658, when a few families from Boston and Portsmouth moved there. 



34 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

land ; in 1640 the first English settlement was made on 
Long Island, at Gravesend, by emigrants from Massa- 
chusetts. Five years later their town records were 
begun, and by 1656 the population was perhaps two 
hundred/ In the same year that Gravesend was settled, 
forty families from Lynn moved to Southampton, erecting 
their church the following year. They alleged that they 
removed because they were "so straitened at home," 
but the church quarrels which had led three parties from 
the same town to Cape Cod since 1637 make one suspi- 
cious that the alleged reason was not the real one. In 
1657 sixty-one houses were occupied in the settlement. 
Other towns were founded by former inhabitants of 
Massachusetts and Connecticut, until in 1660 eleven 
distinct villages had been settled, scattered from one 
end of the island to the other, either along the coast, or 
on smaller bits of land, like Shelter Island. 

Each of the English towns on Long Island was at 
first independent, all questions being determined by 
majority vote in town-meeting. The people of South- 
ampton entered into a social contract, which they signed 
previous to their settlement, agreeing to be bound by 
the will of the majority, and to support the magis- 
trates in the administration of the laws so made. The 
people of Southold and Easthampton did the same ; 
but the latter and those of Southampton sent to Con- 
necticut for a copy of the laws in force there, and either 
used them exactly, or made others similar to them. By 
1662 all the Long Island towns had united with either 
New Haven or Connecticut. One must note, also, a set- 

> Thompson, Long Island, ii, 168-169, 175, 177. 



Longitude Weat 



from Greenwich 




THE BEGINNINGS OF AN AMERICAN FRONTIER 35 

tlement in Westchester, Westchester County, New 
York, by a company of thirty-six men "from New 
England," who secured their grant from the Dutch, and 
whose town was at first called Eastdorp by their 
neigfhbors. 

In 1660 the frontier line extended along the coast, 
not far inland, from the Penobscot to Manhattan Island/ 
It was not continuous, as a glance at the map will show, 
and it tended to follow the larger rivers, for its only 
extension inland was caused by the attraction of rich 
lands along the banks, and by the transportation facili- 
ties so necessary to any settlement. The fear of Indians 
kept settlers from pushing far into the interior, and the 
same danger made the pioneers plant new towns next 
to old ones, except in rare cases. Having once estab- 
lished themselves in an outpost, the pioneers were sub- 
ject to some restrictions as to removal. The General 
Court of Massachusetts issued an order on August 12, 
1645, that since Concord, Sudbury, and Dedham were 
inland towns but thinly peopled and consequently ex- 
posed to great danger, no man living in any of the 
three, be he married or single, should move to another 
town without permission of a magistrate or selectman, 
until " it shall please God to settle peace again, or some 
other way of safety to the above named townes, where- 
upon this Cort, or the council of the comon weale, 
shall set the inhabitants of the said towne at their 
former liberty." When the march inland did not follow 
the rivers, it proceeded by some well-known Indian 
trail such as the Pequot path, or the old Connecticut 
* See map opposite. 



36 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLM^D 

path, or the trail to Lancaster and to Springfield/ Be- 
yond the mainland there were outposts on the Isles of 
Shoals, New Shoreham, Nantucket, and Martha's Vine- 
yard, besides those upon Long Island and its coast 
islands. 

By 1660 the New England colonies had taken definite 
form, and presented the various features which were to 
mark them off as distinctly different organizations from 
those farther to the west and south. Certain traits were 
common to all; in other ways each was quite distinct 
from any other. 

All of the colonies had this feature in common, that 
they were settled directly because of the desire for 
religious freedom. It was but natural, therefore, that 
their community life should grow up around their church; 
and this we find to be the case. In almost every town 
there was a meeting-house with a minister ; around this 
church were grouped the homes of the settlers, rude 
cabins at first, gradually replaced by more substantial 
houses.^ The pioneers had, as has been shown in many 
cases, come directly from England as organized churches 
— minister, deacons, and members — to plant new homes 

' The New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad follows closely the 
old Pequot path from Boston to Providence, following the Sound to New 
York. The old Connecticut path is almost exactly the line of the railroad 
from Providence to Hartford through Putnam and Willimantic ; while the 
Boston and Albany is practically everywhere the old Indian trail from 
Boston to Springfield through Brookfield. 

' These town houses were commonly set gable-end to the street. Out 
on the frontier, the log cabin was the unvarying sign of a new settlement, 
as it was much later in the West ; but in the coast towns there were to 
be found the really comfortable houses of people who were building per- 
manent homes for themselves and their children. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF AN AMERICAN FRONTIER 37 

across the ocean. Rev. Thomas Hooker's followers, for 
example, true to their tradition, moved as an organized 
church when they left Massachusetts for a second 
frontier home in Connecticut. Their places were imme- 
diately taken by Rev. Thomas Shepard and his congre- 
gation, who took over the lands and the church which 
the Hooker emigration had left for later comers. The 
spirit which had animated the first Puritans, the deter- 
mination to found a Bible commonwealth, had animated 
their descendants ; and those who made new homes too 
far from any existing parish to attend its meetings on 
Sunday either took their minister with them, or sent 
back for one as soon as enough families to support a 
minister had built houses on the new tract. To induce 
ministers to move out to the frontier, it was a very 
common thing for the proprietors of a new town to set 
apart one of the original lots for the first minister, and 
often another for the "support of the ministry," besides 
building the church (and frequently a parsonage as well) 
by a common assessment. 

In both Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay the close 
union of church and state was a marked feature of the 
constitutional development. In the latter only church 
members enjoyed the franchise ; in New Haven the 
same rule obtained. In Plymouth and Connecticut, while 
there was no law on the subject, the franchise was in 
practice really about as limited as in Massachusetts 
Bay. The freemen in the town-meeting made regu- 
lations for both civil and religious affairs ; the General 
Court, made up of representatives of the towns, admitted 
freemen, granted lands to settlers, appointed committees 



38 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

to lay out new plantations, and made church laws as 
well. The whole idea was that of a close union of tem- 
poral and spiritual affairs, and by that practice the life 
of the colonies was regulated. In 1639 the Connecticut 
General Court drew up a written constitution, which 
really formulated Massachusetts governmental practice 
as it existed at that time, including the town system 
which Massachusetts Bay had developed in accordance 
with her needs. By this means the practice in the two 
colonies came to be very similar ; but Connecticut, more 
conservative than her neighbor, retained the system 
unchanged long after Massachusetts had superimposed 
a county system for judicial purposes. There were, 
however, in the two colonies the town-meeting, a pri- 
mary assembly of all the freemen ; and the representative 
General Court for the larger concerns of all the towns. 
The New Hampshire settlements, as well as some of 
those in Maine, were under the jurisdiction of Massa- 
chusetts Bay, each one retaining, however, its own 
organization for local concerns. Rhode Island, as has 
been shown, possessed two charters, each being used 
for a portion of the colony, while the towns maintained 
their local organization also. The Long Island towns, 
as we have seen, while preserving the New England 
tradition of town-meetings, united with one of the two 
Connecticut colonies, and sent representatives to act for 
them in the General Court. 

Besides their substantial ao^reement in the character of 
their governmental and religious institutions, we find 
the New England colonies, largely because of the de- 
mands of their religious creeds, favoring schools and the 



THE BEGINNINGS OF AN AMERICAN FRONTIER 39 

education of children from the first. Plymouth had for 
a long time only family teaching; in the laws of 1658 
advice was given to each town to consider the matter of 
getting a schoolmaster. In 1677 the General Court 
ordered that in each town of fifty families or upwards a 
grammar school be supported, any deficit in the rate to 
be made up from the profits of the Cape fishing. The 
Massachusetts Bay General Court passed an act in 1649 
compelling every town of fifty householders to appoint 
a teacher for all their children ; and further requiring a 
grammar school for every town of one hundred fami- 
lies or more. Connecticut and New Haven adopted the 
same system, as did Plymouth at a later time. In higher 
education Massachusetts led the way, when in 1636 
Harvard College was founded as a missionary enter- 
prise. Thus from the first the foundations of educa- 
tion for all children were laid, and traditions established, 
which were to distinguish the Puritans' descendants for 
all time. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 

Out of a wealth of material for the study of New England history, a few 
books have been conspicuously helpful in the preparation of this work. Of 
the more general works, Palfrey's Compendious History of New England 
(4 vols.) is indispensable as far as it goes (to 1765), but has to be cor- 
rected in some places because of later investigations in local history. John 
Winthrop's History of New England, from 1630 to 1649 (Savage edition), 
is of course invaluable. William B. Weeden's Economic and Social His- 
tory of New England, 1620 to 1789 (2 vols.), contains an enormous mass 
of valuable material, which is, however, badly organized. A work which 
was never carried through into the second volume, but is a very good and 
convenient compilation for the settlement of Maine, Vermont, and New 
Hampshire, with an exceptionally good map, is Coolidge and Mansfield's 



40 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

History and Description of New England (Boston, 1859) ; liere every town 
in the three states has its short history, taken sometimes from other works, 
as are certain whole paragraphs on Vermont towns copied verbatim from 
Thompson's Vermont. John Warner Barber's Historical Collectiwis of 
Massachusetts, and Connecticut Historical Collections take up the history of 
every town in these two states, and are fairly accurate. The books must, 
like Coolidge and Mansfield's work, be corroborated as far as possible by 
other testimony. Rhode Island is the only one of the New England States 
which has no such convenient compilation. For early New England insti- 
tutions, and the general historical background, the latest and best work 
is in Professor Edward Channing's History of the United States, vol. i, 
which bears the subtitle The Planting of a Nation in the New World, and 
vol. ii, A Century of Colonial History (1660-1760). 
U- As for more specialized works : for Massachusetts, there are such con- 

temporary works as William Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation 
(Deane Edition), Thomas Prince's Annals, Alexander Young's Chronicles 
of the First Planters of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay (1623 to 1636), and 
Captain Edward Johnson's Wonder-working Providence (W. F. Poole's 
ed., 1867). The Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society con- 
tain a mass of material, with such contemporary accounts as Josselyn's 
Accounts of Two Voyages to New England. There are also the admirable col- 
lections of colonial records (for the colonies of New Plymouth and Massa- 
chusetts Bay), supplemented by the laws known as The Acts and Resolves, 
Public and Private, of the Province of Massachusetts (15 vols., covering 
the period from 1692 to 1780), which need no comment. There is a good 
deal of material on settlement in Thomas Hutchinson's History of Massa- 
chusetts, 1628 to 1774 (3 vols.), and in J. S. Barry's History of Massachu- 
setts (3 vols.). The county histories, especially those compiled by D. H. 
Hurd and S. L. Deyo, necessarily vary in value, since the articles are by 
different persons, many of them untrained for the work, and the books 
are popular in character. For many small towns, however, these compila- 
tions contain all the material at present available, and thus they serve 
their purpose. Local histories, such as Sylvester Judd's History of Hadley 
and J. G. Holland's History of Western Massachusetts (2 vols., 1855), are 
excellent, and, as tested by other material, prove accurate ; many other 
local works are worthless save for such portions as the biographies of citi- 
zens. Works commemorative of special occasions, such as Timothy M. 
Cooley's " Historical Discourse," in The Granville Jubilee, delivered in 
Granville, Massachusetts, in 1845, are very suggestive for the emigration 
of inhabitants from New England towns. Centennial celebrations of the 
founding of churches can usually be relied upon to produce useful statis- 



THE BEGINNINGS OF AN AMERICAN FRONTIER 41 

ties in the same way.^ For a study of population, evidence has to be gath- 
ered from poll tax lists, lists of church members, etc., save in the case of 
such a later compilation as Jesse C bickering's Statistical View of the Pop- 
ulation of Massachusetts from 1765 to I84O (Boston, 1846), which is espe- 
cially suggestive on the decades from 1820 to 1840. 

For Connecticut, the Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut (15 
vols., Hartford, 1850 to 1890) and the Records of the Colony and Planta- 
tion of New Haven (2 vols., Hartford, 1857-58) are full of records of 
settlement and institutions. The Connecticut Historical Society Collections 
(11 vols., Hartford, 1860-1907) are indispensable, as are the Papers (7 
vols.. New Haven, 1865-1908) issued by the New Haven Colony Histori- 
cal Society. Benjamin Trumbull's Complete History of Connecticut, Civil 
and Ecclesiastical (2 vols., covering the period 1620-1764) is useful and 
accurate. There are many excellent local histories, among which are Dr. 
C. W. Bowen's Woodstock, Miss F. M. Caulkins's History of New London 
and her History of Norwich, Rev. A. B. Chapin's Glastenbury for Two Hun- 
dred Years, and Dr. H. R. Stiles's History of Ancient Windsor, Connecticut 
(new edition of 1891, 2 vols., is best). There are others quite as good as 
these. The Record of the Celebration of the Two Hundredth Anniversary of 
the Founding of Yale College (1902), and Franklin B. Dexter 's Sketch of 
Yale University (1897) show the widespread influence of the Connecticut 
institution, especially in the West. Dr. B. C. Steiner's History of Educa- 
tion in Connecticut gives a little information on early schools. 

The Collections of the Rhode Island Historical Society (10 vols., Provi- 
dence, 1827-1902) are not so good as the similar collections for Massa- 
chusetts and Connecticut. There are sometimes articles useful for such 
purposes as this study affords in the Publications (8 vols.) and the Proceed- 
ings (in a number of pamphlets, 1872-92, 1900-02) of the Rhode Island 
Historical Society. Samuel G. Arnold's History of the State of Rhode Is- 
land and Providence Plantations (2 vols., New York, 1859-60) is still the 
best history of Rhode Island. Dr. G. W. Greene's Short History of Rhode 
Island contains some material not in Arnold's work. In local history, W. 
R. Staples's Annals of the Town of Providence (Providence, 1843) is valu- 
able. 

Maine local history can be found, as has been noted above, in Coolidge 
and Mansfield ; in the Collections of the Maine Historical Society (1st series, 
10 vols., 1831-91 ; 2d series, 11 vols., 1865-1908; and a 3d series, 2 vols., 

* The references above are those found most useful for the text of this study. 
Many more works have been utilized iu the preparation of the maps. For ex- 
ample, forty-two local histories were used for the Massachusetts maps, besides 
the twenty or more used for the text. 



42 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

1904-06) ; in the Collections of and Proceedings of the Maine Historical 
Society (2d series, 10 vols., 1890-99) ; in James Sullivan's History of the 
District of Maine (Boston, 1795) ; and in W. D. Williamson's History of the 
State of Maine, 1602 to 1820 (2 vols., 1832). Governor Sullivan tries to 
untangle the skein of overlapping grants as a lawyer would ; Williamson's 
work is very like Trumbull's Connecticut, and contains much material not 
available elsewhere. William Willis's Histoi-y of Portland, from 1632 to 
1864 (2d ed., 1865) is a good piece of work, as is James W. North's 
History of Augusta, but there has been all too little work done on local 
history in Maine, 

The standard general history of New Hampshire is Jeremy Belknap's 
History of New Hampshire (3 vols.), which can be supplemented by that 
of George Barstow (in 1 vol.). There are various sets of documents : 
Provincial and State Papers, in many volumes, edited by Dr. Nathaniel 
Bouton, Isaac W. Hammond, and Albert S. Batcheller, — 29 volumes in 
all. Since, in many New Hampshire towns, settlement took place long 
before incorporation, the collections of charters in the set given above are 
not of value in many cases for such a study as the present one. The local 
histories are few in number, and are mostly concerned with towns settled 
at a later date. 

For Long Island in this period, the Historical Collections of the State of 
New York, by John W. Barber and Henry Howe, is a valuable book, to 
be supplemented by Martha Bockde Flint's Early Long Island (New York, 
1896) ; H. G. Spafford's Gazetteer of the Slate of New York; the old stand- 
ard work of B. F. Thompson, The History of Long Island (2d ed., 2 vols., 
New York, 1843) ; also Silas Wood's Sketch of the First Settlement of the 
Several Towns on Long Island (3d ed.), Brooklyn, 1828. Besides these 
there are the admirable Records of the Town of East Hampton, Long 
Island, Suffolk County, New York (4 vols.), covering the period from 1639 
to 1849. The Collections of the New York Historical Society, 1st series (5 
vols.), also contain a little material. Daniel Denton's Brief Description of 
New York, printed in London in 1670, but reprinted in 1902, is valuable 
as the work of a contemporary writer. Of local histories, the best are 
George R. Howell's Early History of Southampton, Long Island, and the 
Rev. Epher Whitaker's History of Southold, Long Island. 

For Westchester County, there is a good work in two volumes by Rob- 
ert Bolton, Jr., History of the County of Westchester. 



CHAPTER III 

THE INFLUENCE OF INDIAN WARFARE UPON THE 
FRONTIER 

1660-1713 

The history of the frontier from 1660 to 1713 was 
largely determined by the frequent Indian wars during 
this period. The rush of population to the margin of 
danofer would have been enoug-h in itself to account for 
such an outbreak as that instigated by King Philip; 
but when with this normal expansion was combined the 
added impetus of those colonial wars which made up 
one feature of the European struggles of the same 
period, it was little wonder that the Indians took advan- 
tage of their position as coveted allies to pay off old 
scores. In order to understand the situation, it is neces- 
sary to glance for a moment at the relations existing 
between England and her colonies in the years immedi- 
ately succeeding the accession of Charles II. 

The English Restoration of 1660 inaugurated an era 
of conservatism in church and state. The troubled years 
of the Long Parliament and the Protectorate had caused 
many an Englishman, were he Royalist or Puritan, to 
look back with regret upon the time when a king held 
the reins over him. Yet when Charles II and his ad- 
visers inaugurated a policy strongly suggestive of that 
adopted by Charles I in the early years of his reign, it 
was but natural that many should resent such reaction- 



44 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

ary measures, and that emigration should set in toward 
the colonies, whose development had been going on 
steadily during the troublous times of Cromwell. The 
fact that the colonies had been left so largely to their own 
devices for a number of years was conducive to the quiet 
growth of the democratic institutions which had been 
evolved out of an innate love of liberty, and had been 
fostered and developed by the exigencies of life in the 
wilderness, far from the restraining hand of the English- 
men who governed the mother country. To these col- 
onies, then, came many Puritans who feared a regime of 
absolutism and a return to the principles of Archbishop 
Laud, along with other emigrants who were moved by 
the economic and social causes which had been operative 
throughout the century. The acts of Parliament bearing 
upon commerce, which had been passed under Cromwell 
and reenacted and enlarged in their scope after the 
Restoration, were aimed at Dutch shipping at the same 
time that they fostered English industries. In the 
impetus these acts gave to the English carrying-trade 
the colonies were to share. Thus greater opportunities 
opened up before the prospective emigrant, and the 
population of the Atlantic seaboard increased accord- 
ingly. Whatever grievances the Indians had with regard 
to the limitation of their hunting-grounds were but 
aggravated by the expansion necessitated by the arrival 
of the newcomers. 

The laissez-faire policy of Cromwell and his advisers 
had not, however, resulted in any weakening of the 
relation between the mother country and her colonies ; 
but the bonds which were to hold them together seemed 



INFLUENCE OF INDIAN WARFARE 45 

to need strengthening. Soon after the accession of 
Charles, new charters were issued to several colonies, but 
the conditions already in existence were not materially 
altered. To Connecticut was granted the document 
which the inhabitants of that colony regarded as the 
safeguard of their liberties until the early part of the 
nineteenth century. It was secured largely through the 
efforts of a colonist who stood high in favor with 
certain English noblemen, — John Winthrop, Jr., the 
founder of Saybrook, of the Fisher's Island settlement, 
and of New London.^ Its terms provided for a governor, 
deputy-governor, and twelve assistants, to be elected 
annually by the General Court and the Assembly. The 
former body was to consist of not more than two repre- 
sentatives from each town (elected by the freemen), 
and the latter to be made up of the governor, deputy- 
governor, and at least six assistants. Twice a year 
these organizations were to meet to admit freemen, elect 
of&cers, and in general to make laws regulating the 
affairs of the colony, subject only to the condition that 
they should not be repugnant to the laws of England. 
Thus representative government was given the Con- 
necticut people with an extraordinary degree of latitude ; 
the town-meeting was left as it had grown up, and the 
development of liberty was assured to the colonists. In 
this charter, New Haven was joined to the other Con- 
necticut towns ; but it was some time before the settlers 
were brought under its jurisdiction. 

So promptly did Rhode Island proclaim the accession 
of Charles II, that her petition for a charter was favor- 

» See pp. 21 and 27. 



46 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

ably regarded at once. A delay in issuing- the document 
was caused by the indeterminate boundaries of Massa- 
chusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and John Win- 
throp's grants, so that it was not until 1663 that the 
charter was granted. By its terms, the Rhode Island 
towns of Providence, Newport, Portsmouth, Warwick, 
and Coventry were united under the title of the " Rhode 
Island and Providence Plantations," to be governed by 
a governor, deputy-governor, and ten assistants, elected 
annually by the representatives of the various towns. 
The representatives in Rhode Island were not to be the 
same in number for each town, but were apportioned 
roughly according to population, — six for Newport, 
four for Providence, Portsmouth, and Warwick, and two 
for every other town settled then or later. The organi- 
zation of the General Court and of the Assembly was 
like that in Connecticut, and they were to make laws 
as in the latter colony, subject to the condition that 
these laws be not repugnant to those of England. In 
Rhode Island, then, as in Connecticut and Massachusetts, 
representative government was established, while the 
town-meeting of all the freemen developed beside it. 
About the same time that these charters were issued, 
England concluded a war with Holland. By the terms 
of the peace, carried out by Colonel Nicolls in August, 
1664, the Dutch colony of New Netherland came into 
the possession of the English, — a fact of the utmost 
importance for the future history of America. In the 
first place, the fear of Dutch encroachments upon New 
England — a menace since 1633, at least — was thus 
ended j in the second place, the coast from Virginia to 



INFLUENCE OF INDIAN WARFARE 47 

Maine became wholly English by the removal of what 
was then the only rival claimant to the soil; and in the 
third place, the first foreign element was introduced 
into the English population of the colonies. To the last- 
named condition may be ascribed the adaptations such as 
those made presently in the laws for the newly acquired 
colony, which alone could make the assimilation of that 
element possible. Moreover, the Dutch had their own 
institutions, and some readjustment was obviously neces- 
sary if antagonisms were to be avoided. The acquisition 
of New Netherland thus introduced problems of assimi- 
lation and adaptation which had not presented them- 
selves in homogeneous communities like New England, 
but which were, nevertheless, prophetic of similar ques- 
tions to be solved at later times. The first code of laws 
for the conquered territory was proclaimed in 1665, and 
bore the title of " The Duke of York's Laws." These 
statutes bear a striking resemblance in many ways to 
those in force in Massachusetts ; the English towns and 
the English settlers in the Dutch towns probably aiding 
in shaping them to accord with what was then colonial 
practice for New England. Town-meetings had from 
the first furnished the machinery for governing the 
Long Island towns, and they were provided for in the 
Duke's Laws, in order to elect a constable and eight 
overseers for the administration of local concerns, but 
with more power than was given the New England 
selectmen, who were merely executive officers. Over sev- 
eral towns was superimposed, for judicial purposes, the 
riding, which later became the county, whose chief offi- 
cer was the sheriff. In 1703 each town elected a county 



48 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

supervisor, who with his fellow supervisors formed a 
county board, representing all the towns, and standing 
between the town and the General Court of the colony. 
Here, then, is a mixed system of town and county gov- 
ernment somewhat different from the New England 
form, yet closely allied to it in its fundamental features. 
The Duke's Laws provided one feature, however, which 
differed materially from Massachusetts or Connecticut 
practices ; they vested much more power in the hands 
of a governor and council than was given in the neigh- 
boring colonies, leaving the people little voice in affairs 
which concerned anything beyond the riding. 

Another consequence of the acquisition of New Neth- 
erland was the grant made by the Duke of York to his 
intimate friends. Lord Berkeley and Sir George Car- 
teret, of the land lying between the Delaware and the 
Hudson. The name New Jersey, given to the tract, was 
in compliment to Carteret, who had held the Island of 
Jersey during the troublous days of the Civil War. 
There were "squatters" already on the soil, and for 
these and prospective settlers the proprietors drew up a 
plan of government not unlike that in the New England 
colonies under the charter just issued, save that the 
right to annul laws lay with the proprietors, and the 
oath of allegiance to the king was to be supplemented 
by one to the proprietors. 

From 1660 until 1675, what with immigration from 
England and the natural expansion of the colonies, set- 
tlement went on rapidly, and the frontier was pushed 
farther out into the wilderness. As the area of occupied 
soil grew larger, the size of the Indians' hunting- 



^INFLUENCE OF INDIAN WARFARE 49 

grounds diminislied, and therein lay perhaps the most 
potent cause of the conflict between the two races. In 
order to show how great havoc could be wrought it is 
necessary to show conditions in the years preceding the 
Outbreak of hostilities in 1675. 

In Massachusetts, families moved from the older 
towns into the outlying districts, which were still near 
enough to be included in the older parishes; — such 
was the emigration to Merrimac (for two centuries a 
part of Amesbury), and to East Bridgewater (a parish of 
Bridgewater). Other settlements were made about Ply- 
mouth and on Cape Cod ; a church quarrel in Barnstable 
furnished the pioneers of Falmouth, fourteen of whom 
are mentioned in the allotment of lands in 1661. Not 
only were the unoccupied tracts near the coast taken 
up, but the more remote districts to the west and north 
of the colony also. It was a bold man who wished to 
remove to Brookfield in those days, but so fertile was 
the soil that althouofh their nearest neis^hbors were miles 
away in Springfield, Lancaster, and Sudbury, six or 
seven families were in the settlement in 1667.^ Mendon, 
too, was an outpost ; begun in 1660 by people from 
Braintree and Weymouth, it was incorporated seven 
years later, and in 1675 had a population of thirty- 
eight families. Dunstable, on the northern border, then 
included Tyngsborough, and extended a little way into 
New Hampshire, — a distinctly frontier outpost. In the 
Connecticut valley, Samuel Frary, of Medfield, led the 
way for the Hinsdale and Plympton families, who fol- 

' Most of these were from Ipswich. In 1675 there were twenty families 
here. W. T. Davis, "Brookfield," in History of Worcester County, i, olX-514. 



so THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

lowed to plant Deerfield ; other Dedham pioneers went 
after this vanguard, attracted, as Frary had been, by 
the excellent soil of the region. To John Pynchon and 
his associates was granted the tract named Northfield, 
which drew settlers from Northampton, Hadley, and 
Hatfield. Various grants were made in Worcester from 
1657 to 1664, but the tract was too isolated, and the 
danger from Indians too great to make it attractive to 
settlers. The General Court finally sent out a committee 
to look over the ground and report upon its suitability 
as a site for a town ; they brought back word that there 
was enough good land for thirty families, or for sixty 
if other grants were annexed. Settlement followed, and 
before 1675 thirty houselots had been laid out, houses 
built for some thirty families, and the farms were under 
cultivation. These are but a few of the many settle- 
ments made in the first fifteen years following the Re- 
storation. 

North of Massachusetts there was almost no growth. 
In Maine but one new town was begun, — Brunswick, 
whose first settler arrived in 1675. New Hampshire 
grew but little, the only attempts at new towns being in 
the vicinity of Dunstable, and above Northfield, as con- 
tinuations of those settlements. 

Rhode Island, determined to win her case as to the 
western boundary, had in 1669 stationed thirty fami- 
lies in the territory now occupied by Westerly, Hopkin- 
ton, Charlestown, and Richmond. Two families began 
the town of Woonsocket in 1666, and Barrington (till 
1717 part of Swansey) was settled in 1667. East Green- 
wich owed its beginning to the boundary dispute, for 



INFLUENCE OF INDIAN WARFARE 51 

families were encouraged to go there by offers of ninety 
acres to fifty men, on condition that they build homes 
on the land within a year, and open a road from the 
bay into their country. The grants were made in 1667, 
and settlement followed the same year both in East and 
West Greenwich ; but the latter settlement, because of its 
poor land and lack of communication with Narragansett 
Bay, was of very slow growth. 

In Connecticut the tendency to expansion took the 
form of filling in about the old towns; — for example, 
the Windsor people moved over into East Windsor about 
1662. Ten years later twenty-seven men are named as a 
" list of persons on the East side of Great River," who 
were appointed to work the highways. The lands of the 
first settlers almost all ran three miles back from the 
river ; their houses were usually erected on the upland, 
but as their number increased they were compelled to 
move back into the woodlands. Haddam was purchased 
from the Indians in 1662, and twenty-eight young men 
from Hartford, Wethersfield, and Windsor began new 
homes for themselves on both sides of the river. Doubt- 
less many of these were sons of the pioneers of those 
towns, who had inherited the instinct of frontiersmen, 
and determined to begin life on farms of their own 
where land was cheap and plentiful. In 1668 the town 
was large enough to be incorporated. In the north and 
west expansion took place, as when Hartford, Windsor, 
and Guilford sent out twelve planters who began Kil- 
lingworth in 1663.^ WalUngford, " New Haven Vil- 

* Barber, Hist. Coll. of Conn., 529. The town was named Kenilworth ; 
the present name of the town is a corruption from it. Ibid., 530. 



52 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

lage," had been purchased by the Davenport-Eaton 
Company in 1638; for thirty-two years the tract was 
unoccupied, but the year after its settlement it had a 
town-meeting, when there were about one hundred 
inhabitants, and in 1674 it settled its own minister, 
though regular services had been held on Sunday since 
the first days of the arrival of inhabitants/ Half of the 
congregation of Stratford, about fifteen families, taking 
their minister with them, settled Woodbury in 1673 
after a church quarrel, — the old and fruitful source of 
Connecticut towns. These towns serve as types of the 
great expansion within the borders of Connecticut. 

Off the Connecticut coast lay Long Island, to which 
New Englanders had emigrated from time to time, until 
in 1670 it was inhabited from one end to the other. 
In the western portion lay four or five towns whose 
population was wholly Dutch ; the rest of the island, 
containing twelve towns and scattered farmhouses, was 
entirely English.^ Expansion in that direction was no 
longer possible, and the extension of the frontier must 
obviously take place elsewhere. 

Connecticut, far from being the " land of steady 
habits," had always been productive of the new towns 
which were plain illustrations of the unrest of her inhab- 
itants. Not restrained by the limits of the colony, large 
emigrations took place after 1660 to another district, 
— New Jersey. About the time that the grant to 
Berkeley and Carteret was made, a few pioneers from 

* Davis, Wallingford, 70-108. There is an interesting compact drawn 
up at the time of the settlement of the town ; ibid., 77, 78. 
2 Denton, New York (ed. of 1902), 41. 



INFLUENCE OF INDIAN WARFARE ,53 

Connecticut began the town of Shrewsbury, to which 
came shortly other families from Rhode Island and 
from New York (as the New Netherland acquisition 
soon came to be called). A typical Connecticut removal 
was the defection of a portion of the New Haven 
colony to New Jersey in 1666. Some of the New 
Haven people had opposed strenuously any acknow- 
ledgment of the Restoration, and feeling had run high 
between the ultra-republicans and the more conserva- 
tive party which could see but one safe course, namely, 
to follow the lead of England in her attitude towards 
King Charles. In 1661 some of the more democratic 
families opened negotiations with Governor Stuyvesant 
of New Netherland, with a view to removal from New 
Haven. Nothing came of this attempt, but four years 
later the problem was solved by the arrival in East 
Jersey of its new governor, Philip Carteret. Imme- 
diately upon his arrival the governor sent agents into 
New England to publish the terms which the pro- 
prietors offered to settlers and to invite them to these 
lands. The offer was a liberal one, and in the following 
year a committee from the Connecticut towns of Guil- 
ford, Branford, and Milford was sent ahead to look 
over the country, learn more exactly the terms of the 
offer, and ascertain how friendly the Indians were apt 
to be. The members returned with a favorable report, 
and were straightway sent back with power to buy a 
township, select a site, and make all arrangements for 
immediate settlement. Thirty families set out by boat 
from New Haven, and established themselves in what is 
now Newark, in separate neighborhoods, according to 



54 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

the towns from which they had come.* Immediately 
after their arrival delegates were appointed to draw up 
a form of government, by the terms of which no one 
could become a freeman, or vote, or hold office who 
was not a member of the Congregational Church. True 
to their traditions, the church in Newark was a Con- 
necticut church moved in its entirety, — pastor, deacons, 
records, and major part of the congregation. The first 
school was established in 1676. The College of New 
Jersey, now known as Princeton University, was begun 
in Newark, over half a century later, and thus the 
foundations of higher education in New Jersey were 
laid by the descendants of the Connecticut pioneers 
who had laid the foundations of the town and had oriven 
it the character it was to maintain. Governor Belcher 
testified to the tenacity with which Newark people 
insisted upon their rights at the time of the Revolution ; 
— an interesting comment upon the transmission of 
political theories from generation to generation.^ 

Connecticut did not furnish all the pioneers to New 
Jersey. Settlers from the Massachusetts towns of Haver- 
hill, Newbury, Yarmouth, and Barnstable removed to 
Woodbridge in 1666-67, and in a few years controlled 
about thirty thousand acres through the homes and 
farms of the six hundred people living there. A small 
company from Piscataqua in New Hampshire came 
about the same time to found Piscataway. Elizabeth 
was settled by a mixed population, in contrast with the 

1 This arrangement was soon broken up by the sense of mutual danger, 
and the settlement was made more compact. 

' Barber and Howe, Hist. Coll. of N. F., 173-176. Some of this 
Newark colony settled in Bloomfield. Ihid., 156. 



INFLUENCE OF INDIAN WARFARE 55 

homogeneous character of such a settlement as Newark. 
The pioneers of Elizabeth were drawn from England, 
Scotland, New England, and Long Island. A typical 
first settler was John Strickland, who had come from 
England with Winthrop's company and settled in 
Watertown. He was one of the members of the church 
in that place who moved to Wethersfield. Soon after 
he took up his abode in Fairfield, from which town he 
went with the founders of Hampstead, Long Island, 
and began a fourth pioneer's home. In 1661 he was 
living in Huntington, Long Island, but was induced 
to move to Jamaica, a little farther away. In 1666 he 
made what was probably his last move, — to Elizabeth,* 
where most of the settlers had come as had Strickland 
from Long Island, the majority of them from South- 
ampton.^ 

New Jersey was settled rather thickly from the first, 
for several reasons. Its proximity to New York assured 

» Hatfield, Elizabeth, 59, 60. 

' They were men from twenty-five to forty years of age, with wives 
and children. The whole settlement was planted quite in accord with 
Denton's description of the mode of settlement prevalent in New Nether- 
land in 1670. Denton says that towns were usually begun by the banding 
together of about enough families to make a town, who went (with the 
governor's consent) to look at a tract of land which appeared desirable. 
Upon their return, they were accustomed to petition the governor for a 
grant of the land selected, and upon being admitted into the colony, the 
patent was accorded to the original company and their associates. These 
persons thereupon made a settlement, and admitted inhabitants until the 
town was full, when land was allotted "suitable to every man's occa- 
sions," the rest being held in common till the time seemed ripe for a 
second division. The pasture land was, however, never divided, but " lies 
in common to the whole Town." See Denton, Brief Description of New 
York (ed. of 1002), 57, 58. 



56 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

the pioneers a steady market for their surplus products 
as well as for the fruits of their Indian trade, besides 
enabling them with little difficulty to obtain in return 
what they needed ; the Indians, far from being a men- 
ace to the settlers, were generally friendly, and there 
was from the first a lively traffic in furs, skins, and game. 
These facts, combined with the advantages of good soil 
and climate, and the generous policy of the proprietors, 
contributed not a little to the prosperity of the colony. 
In 1668 was drawn up the first New Jersey code of laws ; 
and it is, as one would expect, essentially a New Eng- 
land product. Deputies from each village met in Eliza- 
beth, and, the Puritan element predominating, the laws 
(especially those relating to criminals) are almost identi- 
cal with the Massachusetts laws of the same period. The 
refusal of the inhabitants, now grown accustomed to 
individual ownership in land, to pay the quit-rents de- 
manded by the proprietors led to a rebellion in 1672, 
in which the settlers won their point. 

In 1675 there were probably one hundred and twenty 
thousand people in New England, of whom sixteen thou- 
sand could bear arms. We have seen how widely they 
were scattered, and how great had been the extension of 
the frontier since the Pequot War forty years before.^ A 
singularly astute and capable Indian, Philip, had since 
about 1662 been more or less of an annoyance to the 
Plymouth and Rhode Island settlers ; but in 1674 it was 
evident that a general Indian uprising, planned and in- 
stigated by Philip, was imminent. In that year he and 
his warriors descended upon Swansey, in Rhode Island, 

* See map opposite. 




New England 

Settlement. 
1675 

Just before 
King Philip's War. 



INFLUENCE OF INDIAN WARFARE 57 

and for nearly two years — until his death — all of 
New England lived in terror. The struggle is of the 
keenest interest to us because of its effect upon the 
expansion of settlement which had at the time of the 
outbreak reached the greatest extent attained up to 
that time/ There was not a New England colony which 
did not suffer, there was scarcely an outpost which was 
not wholly deserted and burned, or which did not re- 
ceive a severe blow from which it took long to recover. 
The outposts of settlement naturally suffered most. The 
district of Maine, which in 1675 contained thirteen towns 
and plantations, and could muster perhaps a thousand 
soldiers in case of need, was desolated. Every settler in 
Kennebec County had fled by 1677, though fifty families 
had lived there seven years before. Bristol had been 
burned, Wiscasset harassed, Biddeford destroyed, Port- 
land deserted and then burned, Brunswick reduced to 
ashes. The whole country east of Casco Bay was a waste, 
and of all the towns and plantations enumerated five years 
before, only about six remained in 1680. The allies of 
Philip had dealt the country east of New Hampshire a 
blow from which it did not recover in half a century. 

New Hampshire suffered hardly at all. Even Nashua, 
the extreme frontier, had one hardy fighter, Jonathan 
Tyng, who stayed when all his neighbors here and over 
the line in Massachusetts had fled, so that the town was 
never wholly deserted. 

Massachusetts suffered greatly. From Seekonk and 
Rehoboth in the southern part, to Northfield and Dun- 
stable in the north and west, sixteen towns were either 
^ See map opposite. 



58 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

destroyed or deserted.^ Others, like Springfield, were par- 
tially burned j and even so populous a town as Dedham 
was threatened to such a degree that several terrified 
families fled to Boston. 

In Ehode Island four towns were either destroyed 
or abandoned, — Warwick, Coventry, Westerly, and 
Charlestown. Connecticut suffered comparatively little ; 
the Wallingford people fortified their homes, anticipat- 
ing an attack, and the Woodbury settlers fled to Strat- 
ford, where they remained a year. Simsbury was 
destroyed, the inhabitants taking refuge at Windsor; 
Waterbury was abandoned from 1675 to 1677, Granby, 
Woodbury, and Southbury for a year or two. 

The blow was in itself a severe one, and it would 
have been long before the frontier again regained its 
former limit, especially upon the northern boundaries, 
had this been the only struggle. Scarcely had the mem- 
ory of King Philip's War faded, however, when the 
colonies were drawn into the first of that series of con- 

^ The towns were Worcester, Mendon, Berlin, Deerfield, Nortlifield, 
Groton, Lancaster, Stow, Brookfield, New Bedford, Medfield, Marlbor- 
ough, Middleborough, Milford, Ayer, and Maynard. 

At the time there were about forty families in Groton, twenty in Brook- 
field, and thirty-eight in Mendon. W. T. Davis, " Brookfield," in History 
of Worcester County, i, 514 ; G. B. Williams, "Mendon," ihid., 376 ; S. A. 
Green, "Groton," in History of Middlesex County, ii, 509. " Tlie number 
of settlers in Northampton was, according to the records, about one hun- 
dred, and allowing three to the family of each settler, which would seem 
to be a reasonably estimated average, that town contained four hundred in- 
habitants. Hatfield and Hadley probably contained from two hundred to 
four hundred more, while Westfield, Deerfield, and Northfield contained an 
aggregate, perhaps of two hundred. Fifteen hundred would doubtless be an 
extravagant estimate of the valley at the date stated, and the majority 
of these were dependents." See Holland, Western Massachusetts, i, 72. 



INFLUENCE OF INDIAN WARFARE 69 

flicts between England and France for supremacy in the 
New World which have sometimes been called their 
second hundred years' war. The struggle which began 
as the War of the Palatinate in Europe was extended 
to the colonies as King: William's War. Here the French 
and English contended for the aid of the Indians, and 
the horrors of savage warfare were added to the other 
hardships of the conflict. When the Peace of Ryswick 
was signed in 1697 the possessions of the two countries 
remained as they had been at the opening of hostilities 
in 1689, but the frontier-line had been again thrust 
back by reason of burned and abandoned towns. The 
second of these European contests began in 1700 as the 
War of the Spanish Succession, known in the colonies 
as Queen Anne's War. Here, again, the Indians played 
a large part in the devastation of frontier villages, and 
plundered and laid waste large areas of thinly populated 
territory. The Peace of Utrecht in 1713-14 terminated 
hostilities, and was of the greatest importance to the 
development of the colonies, especially in the north, for 
New England was now surrounded by friends, not foes ; 
since England had, with the aid of the colonial army, 
wrested Nova Scotia from France, and had wrung an 
acknowledgment of sovereignty from the Iroquois Indians, 
— the fiercest tribes which threatened the pioneers who 
had explored the lands west of the Hudson River. An un- 
precedented opportunity was thus opened for expansion to 
the west, and the outpouring of population in that direc- 
tion followed immediately. A study of the details of settle- 
ment will show clearly how expansion was seriously hin- 
dered by these successive conflicts from 1675 to 1713. 



60 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

So widespread had been the devastation during the 
years of warfare that various precautionary measures 
are to be found in the records of the several colonies. 
For instance, in 1677 orders for laying out the town of 
East Greenwich, Rhode Island, were issued, on condi- 
tion that each of the forty-eight freemen to whom 
grants were made should settle upon his houselot within 
a year, and build a house " fit and suitable for habi- 
tation." Neglect of this order was to mean forfeiture of 
the share. In the district of Maine, a large portion of 
which Massachusetts had purchased in 1677 for £1250, 
renewal of settlement was regulated by the General Court 
of Massachusetts, which enumerated certain towns as 
being open to reoccupation, but in these no less than 
twenty or thirty families were to go together. They were, 
moreover, to build near the shore, upon lots of three or 
four acres to a family, the village to be a compact one, 
with the farmlands lying about it. In this way it was 
hoped that the destruction of the frontier might be 
avoided.^ 

' Connecticut made similar attempts to protect outlying settlements. 
An order of the General Court in 1704 thus enumerates the frontier 
towns : Simsbury, Waterbury, Woodbury, Danbury, Colchester, Windham, 
Mansfield, an(^ Plainfield. It also enjoins the settlers in those places not 
to break up the towns or desert them without permission from the court, 
on penalty of forfeiting title to their estates. See Conn. Col. Rec, iv, 463. 

One or two more instances show both these points : in 1708-09, twenty- 
five families from Norwalk, attracted by the limestone soil, purchased the 
tract thirteen by three miles upon which Ridgefield is located. In 1712 a 
petition was drawn up for a church ; the next year a minister preached 
from time to time, and one was formally settled in 1714. See D. W. 
Teller, Ridgefield, 3-14, 92. 

In 1708 the General Court granted Newtown to thirty-six petitioners, 
and appointed a committee of four (one each from Stratford, Fairfield, 



7 2 Lonffitude West 70 from Greenw-ich 




INFLUENCE OF INDIAN WARFARE 61 

But even such precautions were of no avail in restor- 
ing a feeling of confidence which might lead settlers to 
the lands lying north and east of Massachusetts Bay. 
In Maine, not a single town was planted in those forty 
years, and there were actually fewer people and fewer 
towns in Maine at the end of the period than there had 
been in 1660/ New Hampshire was, as has been said, 
but little affected by the ravages of Indian warfare from 
1674 to 1676. But no one wanted to venture his life in 
a new plantation, so that, although the old towns filled 
up, new ones were not begun. A truce with the Indians 
in 1694 led to the granting of a charter to twenty peti- 
tioners from Hampton who wished to settle at Kingston. 
Many were obliged to return to their old homes within 
two years, though after the war they resumed their en- 
terprise; it was 1725, however, before the first minister 
was settled. Greenland, settled in the latter years of the 
seventeenth century from Portsmouth and as a part of 
it, petitioned in 1705 for a minister and schoolmaster of 
its own, and begged to be exempted from the support 
of the Portsmouth church and school, since it had a 
population of three hundred and twenty inhabitants. In 
1708 it was estimated that there were not a thousand 
men in the colony. Hudson was settled in 1710, but there 
was no further expansion of New Hampshire till 1716. 

In Massachusetts the towns which had been destroyed 
or depopulated during King Philip's War were rebuilt 
almost immediately afterward. Lancaster lay desolate 

Woodbury, and Danbury) to allot the land to these thirty-six, who must 
settle their land within four years and live there for four years. In 1711 
the land was divided among the proprietors, and the town incorporated. 
1 See map opposite page 70. 



' 62 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

till 1679 ; two years later seventeen or eighteen families 
had returned and petitioned successfully for exemption 
from " county rates " because of their hardships. Some 
towns, like Framingham, grew very rapidly. Stow, which 
had no town-meeting for five years, was filled up by 
returning families who brought with them others from 
Concord, so that not only was the town incorporated, 
but it supported its own minister. Dunstable people re- 
turned immediately after the close of the war, and com- 
pleted their church within two years. In 1711 there 
were seven garrisoned houses, two of which were within 
the present limits of Tyngsborough ; to these garrison- 
houses were assigned nineteen soldiers, and thirteen fam- 
ilies claimed their protection. But presently the com- 
munity split into two, because each desired the control 
of its own civil affairs " for greater convenience of pub- 
lic worship " ; and over the location of the meeting-house 
the town separated into the two villages of Dunstable 
and Tyngsborough. Of new towns, some were settled in 
Plymouth County from the older towns in the old col- 
ony, — Halifax, Hanson, Wareham, and Lakeville. Set- 
tlers moved from Eastham to Truro, settling that town 
and Provincetown about 1700, though land had been 
purchased several years before. But the growth in the 
southern part of Massachusetts was chiefly because of 
increased population in the old towns. In Worcester 
County, the records of the town of Worcester are like 
those of the Maine towns, — a series of dates of settle- 
ment and abandonment, till only one family remained in 
1701, the reason for its final desertion being that the 
General Court had stricken it from the list of frontier- 



INFLUENCE OF INDIAN WARFARE 63 

towns which were not to be abandoned. Its permanent 
settlement dated from 1713. Oxford, a new Worcester 
County town, whose proprietors included the governor 
and deputy-governor of Massachusetts, was settled in 
1686 by thirty French Protestant refugees, one of the 
many companies driven out of France by the revocation 
of the Edict of Nantes. To these emigrants were granted 
about twelve thousand acres. Upon the breaking up of 
the settlement by Indians in 1696 the settlers went to 
Boston, and the land reverted to the proprietors ; these 
granted it to new settlers inl713, on condition that at least 
thirty f amihes settle the tract at once. The condition was 
fulfilled, and the town incorporated the same year.^ 

Rhode Island, after King Philip's War, built up the 
towns which had been destroyed, but aside from natural 
increase in the older towns and some immigration, it 
had no expansion. A company of forty-five French Pro- 
testant families began a plantation called Frenchtown in 
1686, and built a church and twenty-six houses ; but 
their neighbors made life such a burden to them that 
the refugees were dispersed. Four of the five towns later 
received from Massachusetts were settled at this time, — 
Little Compton, Warren, Tiverton, and Bristol, the last- 
named settled by Boston merchants who named it for 

' Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., 3d ser., ii, 29-32. Hopkiuton is slightly differ- 
ent from the others. It was settled on a tract which was purchased for 
the purpose of perpetuating the legacy of Edward Hopkius to Harvard 
College. To the settlers of 1710-12, the president and trustees of the 
college leased it. These pioneers came singly from Sudbury, Framingham, 
Sherborn, Concord, Needham, and Marlborough ; the eighteen families 
who joined them in 1719 came from Scotland and Ireland. See Mass. 
Hist. Soc. Coll., 1st ser., iv, 15, 16, and Clement Meserve, " Hopkinton," 
in History of Middlesex County, iii, 800. 



64 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

Bristol in England, with the hope that its fine harhor 
might cause it to rival its namesake. Scituate (Rhode 
Island), which had grown but slowly, and had no very 
good reputation for law and order, received a better 
class of settlers in 1710 from Scituate, Massachusetts, 
whereupon it took the name of the latter place, and was 
incorporated in 1731. Since the seventeenth century 
most new towns in Rhode Island have had their origin in 
the subdivision of old towns then in existence. In 1715 
there were, perhaps, nine thousand people in the colony ; 
nine towns sent delegates to the colonial assembly.^ 

Connecticut expanded more rapidly than any other 
New England colony during the period 1676 to 1713. 
The towns which had suffered during the war were 
quickly rebuilt, and the development of Woodbury is 
typical of others. In 1675 its people fled to Stratford, 
some returning the next year, though others were 
afraid to take up their old home for several years; in 
1682 its population was four or five hundred. 

The first new town planted after the war was Meriden, 
which drew its pioneers from Wallingford, and was for a 
long time a parish of that town. To the east, Preston and 
Groton were settled about 1680 ; to the north, Enfield 
the next year. Danbury, Mansfield, and Windham were 
founded before 1687. Plainfield numbered persons from 
many towns among its first inhabitants ; — from Massa- 
chusetts, Woburn, Stow, Chelmsford, Haverhill, Ips- 
wich, and Concord ; from Connecticut, Stonington, New 

* Palfrey, New England, iv, 466 (ed. 1882). The towns were Newport, 
Providence, Portsmouth, Warwick, Westerly, Kingston, New Shoreham, 
Jamestown, and Greenwich. 



INFLUENCE OF INDIAN WARFARE 65 

London, and the vicinity of the latter town. The settle- 
ment was retarded because of the impossibility of getting 
a clear title to the lands. In 1704 it was still a frontier- 
town ; the next year it had a church for the first time. 
At the same time that Plainfield was settled (1690) set- 
tlers from Hartford, Newtown, Woburn, Dorchester, 
Barnstable, and Medfield began the town of Canterbury, 
the two towns claiming thirty families in 1699, when 
Plainfield was incorporated, including Canterbury. Four 
years later Canterbury was incorporated as a separate 
town, but evidently Plainfield had far outstripped it in 
numbers. 

Woodstock owed its existence to settlers from Rox- 
bury, Massachusetts, who found their town "too small 
for its inhabitants," and in 1686 moved — thirty families 
strong — over the old Connecticut path to New Roxbury. 
Oxford and Mendon were their nearest neighbors ; but 
their isolation seems not to have troubled them. It was 
in all probability their pastor, John Eliot, who told them 
of the beauty and fertility of the "Nipmuck" country 
in which they settled. In 1690 they renamed their town 
Woodstock, held a town-meeting, and settled a minister. 
But the town grew slowly, for immigration was not rapid 
to a place where private proprietorship was the rule.^ 

Lisbon grew but slowly, retarded, as was Plainfield, 
because of the difficulty of getting a clear title. Pur- 
chases were made here by men from Ipswich, Massachu- 

1 E. D. Lamed, Windham County, 18^4. Also C. W. Bowen, Wood- 
stock, 20, 23, 24. Pomfret was settled the same year as Woodstock, by 
farmers also from Roxbury, but only a few came until after 1695, for 
fear of the Indians. Barber, Hist. Coll. of Conn., 437. 



66 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

setts, in 1694-95, and settlements were begun at once; 
yet in 1718 there were only sixteen persons on the roll 
of accepted inhabitants.^ Northampton families joined 
others from Windsor, Saybrook, and Long Island to be- 
gin Hebron in 1704, before the township was granted. 
The town's growth was delayed for two reasons, — the 
Indians were troublesome, and the proprietors, non* 
resident themselves, claimed extensive tracts upon which 
they would neither settle themselves nor allow others 
to do so. The General Court was compelled to appoint 
several committees to encourage and assist the planters, 
and were so far successful that about 1713 " they were 
enabled to erect a meeting-house, and settle a minister 
among them." ^ 

This period saw settlers leaving New England for 
other colonies, — for Bedford in Westchester County, 
New York, for example.^ A settlement had been made 
in the town of Westchester many years before, so that 
the district was not unknown. Settlers also went in 
large numbers to East Jersey,^ where they not only 

* F. M. Caulkins, History of Norwich, 257-259. The river towns at this 
time sent settlers to Colchester, but complaint was made that the settle- 
ment was being delayed by Saybrook men, who claimed large grants of 
land there. See Conn. Col. Rec, iv, 298. 

Hartford and Northampton furnished the pioneers of Coventry chiefly, 
though others came from " a great variety of places." See Trumbull, 
Connecticut, i, 443, 444. 

The first settlers of Durham were from Guilford, two arriving in 1703, 
and others shortly after ; yet in 1707 there were but fifteen families. 
The next year the town filled up with newcomers from Northampton, 
Stratford, Milford, and other towns. See ibid., 400. 

2 Trumbull, Connecticut, i, 430, 431. 

^See map opposite. 

* New Jersey had been divided in 1674 into East and West Jersey. 



INFLUENCE OF INDIAN WARFARE 67 

filled up the towns already established, but began new 
ones. About 1682 Quakers from Rhode Island and 
Long Island settled in Springfield ; in 1697 pioneers 
from Fairfield, Connecticut, planted a new Fairfield and 
organized a Presbyterian church the same year. Besides 
the new towns, settlers from Long Island and New 
England were constantly moving to Newark, Elizabeth, 
and Middletown, which on account of their increasing 
population either continually extended their limits, or 
formed in their neighborhoods centres for new villages. 
But for about ten years (1693 to 1703) immigration 
was almost shut off because of uncertainties as to land 
tenure and land titles. An interesting phase of develop- 
ment was manifested in the number of religious sects 
represented in East Jersey, where such a variety of 
churches was maintained that religious intolerance could 
hardly exist. The people of Newark and EUzabeth were 
Congregationalists, and each town had its own church. 
There were, however, among them a few Church 
of England adherents, Presbyterians, Anabaptists, 
and Quakers. The first Episcopal service held in Eliza- 
beth was in 1703. The Rev. John Brooke wrote in 
1706 that he held service in the Dissenters' meeting- 
house with their permission till his church was built, 
and that some stayed after their own service to attend 
his. 

As to population, Colonel Morris reported in 1700 
that there were in East Jersey ten towns, with a popu- 
lation of about eight thousand. Most of the towns were 
thickly settled in one part, with outlying farms and 
little villages, all bearing the name of the more compact 



68 



THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 



town. He found settlers generally " of very narrow for- 
tunes and such as could not well subsist in the places 
they had left." ^ 

Another enterprise which illustrates admirably the 
character of New England pioneering for all time be- 
longs to this period. On the 22d of October, 1695, the 
Rev. Joseph Lord was ordained in Dorchester, Massa- 
chusetts, by representatives 
of the churches in Roxbury, 
Boston, Milton, Charles- 
town, and Nonantum, so 
that he mig-ht cro to South 
Carolina. A church coven- 
ant was entered into by 
Mr. Lord and eight others, 
amonsT whom were num- 




Dorchester Colony 

SOUTH CAROLINA 
1695-6 



bered one William Norman of Carolina (it is thought 
that he had come up from the South to encourage the 
undertaking), three men from Concord (Massachusetts), 
two from Dorchester, one from Reading, and one from 
Sudbury. The object was undoubtedly a missionary one, 
for the cause of removal is stated to be "a desire to 
promote the extension of religion in the southern plan- 
tations." The emigrants moved as an organized church, 
taking their minister with them, and retaining the Con- 
gregational form of government. They sailed in two 
ships to the Ashley River, and on the 2d of February, 
1696, took the sacrament of the Lord's Supper under an 
oak, and began to build a settlement which they called 



" Memorial of Colonel Morris," in N. J. Hist. Soc. Proc, iv, 118- 



120. 



INFLUENCE OF INDIAN WARFARE 69 

Dorchester. They erected a meeting-house immediately, 
thus perpetuating another Puritan tradition/ 

Harvard College was the only institution of higher 
learning in New England until the movement for a 
second college was begun in 1701 in New Haven, which 
had always fostered a hope that some day it might har- 
bor such an institution of its own. Two graduates of 
Harvard College consulted as to plans, and these, with 
other ministers, founded the college by giving, in the 
succeeding years, books for that purpose.^ After the 
prehminaries of securing a charter and organizing with 
trustees were carried through, a "collegiate school" was 
started at Saybrook in 1702. Soon after its removal to 
New Haven in 1716 it took the name of Yale College, 
out of gratitude to its first liberal patron, and there were 
laid the foundations which assured its future prosperity.' 
The president from 1716 to 1722 was a Harvard grad- 
uate, as was the Rev. Thomas Clap, who guided the 
college affairs from 1739 to 1766.^ It was but natural 
that the first college in New England, itself a mission- 
ary enterprise, should thus help in estabhshing a second 
institution upon a similar foundation. 

What with the scattering of pioneers from Maine to 
the missionary enterprise in South Carolina,^ the influx 

' History of Dorchester, Mass., 261-263. See, also, Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., 
3d ser., i, 55-59, for a project previous to 1663 in which New Englanders 
were involved, for planting a colony on the Charles River " in Florida." 

2 Dexter, History of Yale University, 8. 

» Ibid., 9-19. 

* Ibid., 21, 27. 

' That there are emigrations about which scarcely any records exist is 
certain from an item in the family history called The Doane Family. One 
Daniel Doane of Easthani, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, with his family, and 



70 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

of French refugees and emigrants from England, and 
the fact that even the natural increase was not carefully 
recorded, it is no wonder that figures indicating popu- 
lation should be well-nigh impossible to ascertain. Most 
of the estimates to be found are perhaps but shrewd 
guesses. Trumbull thought that Connecticut had in 
1665, at the time of the union, some eight or nine thou- 
sand inhabitants, with about twenty ministers. In 1680, 
the answers to the Lords of Trade and Plantations (given 
by the governor and council) estimated the militia at 
2507, from which Trumbull thinks the whole population 
about twelve thousand, including Rye and Bedford 
(now in New York). The inhabitants of Rhode Island 
were 7181 at the time of the first census, in 1708; 
Palfrey has estimated the male population of New 
Hampshire in 1708 as under one thousand, while no 
figures are available for Maine, so precarious had been 
the existence of that district during the entire period. 

By 1713 the settlers on the frontier had become dif- 
ferentiated more or less from their brethren who stayed 
in such coast towns as Boston and New Haven.^ Whereas 
in the latter prosperity had made the rise of a leisure 
class possible, — a class which could take on a degree 

one William Twining, with bis family, from the same place, joined the 
Society of Friends, and about seventeen hundred removed to New Town, 
Bucks County, Pennsylvania. They made the journey of seven hundred 
miles overland, took up land, and affiliated with the Quakers of that sec- 
tion. Their descendants were either pioneers iu Montgomery and Lycom- 
ing counties in Pennsylvania, or moved with the Pennsylvania emigrants 
to North Carolina, while still later descendants will be taken up in the his- 
tory of Quaker settlements in Ohio and Indiana. See The Doane Family, 
53-55, 78, 79, 123. 
' See map opposite. 



72 Longitude West 



from Greenwich 




\,._!^atrifui 




New England 

Settlement. 

1713 



INFLUENCE OF INDIAN WARFARE 71 

of culture and refinement which bore some Hkeness to 
that of the mother country, — out on the frontier Hf e was 
still rude and hard. The incoming English settlers who 
arrived from time to time seem to have settled in the 
older towns, and there their influence would be felt. 
But the pioneer was most frequently the son of a pion- 
eer, his wife the daughter of another, and together they 
began a new home where land was cheap and plenty, 
and money went farther than it did on the coast. An 
instance of the economic development of the coast as 
contrasted with the interior is the increasing diversity 
of occupation in the former as over against the latter. 
Under the fostering care of the Navigation Acts there 
had developed a great increase of intercourse between 
the Old World and the New, and such interests as those 
of shipping, along with the kindred ones of trade and 
commerce, had grown enormously. It was to the men of 
the coast towns that these opportunities came, for they 
represented the moneyed class, whereas the pioneers on 
the frontier usually made a home in the wilderness with 
a distinct view to bettering their unsatisfactory financial 
condition. A prosperous traffic with the West Indies 
had sprung up, and promised rich returns. Shipbuilding 
became one of the most important industries of New 
England, thus rendering the colonists still more inde- 
pendent of the mother country in respect to all features 
of the carrying trade. While the population of the sea- 
board thus became on the economic side more like Enof- 
land, the frontier continued to be rural, engaged in 
rural occupations, with cattle-raising, lumbering and 
dairying as adjuncts to the chief industry, — farming. 



72 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

Besides tlie more evident economic differences, the 
two regions represented more subtle distinctions. It was 
on the frontier that men from the various colonies 
mingled, and while they held in common the stern reli- 
gious views and educational ideas of their ancestors, 
these were tempered by contact with others of some- 
what different cast; so that while fundamentally the 
ideals of all were the same, — all were striving 
toward civil and religious liberty, and all were tenacious 
of their rights, — individualism still found its freest 
development out at the edge of civilization. Conditions 
were not unlike those which had produced the first emi- 
grations from England, — the radical still departed for 
the wilderness, leaving the conservative in possession of 
the field. The church quarrels which continued to be a 
potent factor in the development of new towns had been 
at the root of many an exodus to New Jersey, as well 
as to the unoccupied regions of the older colonies. Curi- 
ously enough, however, when the malcontents found 
themselves in the majority instead of in the minority (as 
they had been before their removal), they frequently be- 
came as intolerant as their comrades had been. On the 
other hand, they often grew broader minded, as was the 
case in New Jersey, and made extraordinary adaptations 
and compromises. Upon the whole, however, one could 
expect more toleration in the newer communities than 
he was apt to find where conditions had become more 
crystallized. In spite of superficial differences, the fun- 
damental institutions of the town-meeting, the church, 
the school, — all these the pioneer carried to his new 
home, and the region so recently a wilderness took on 



INFLUENCE OF INDIAN WARFARE 73 

more and more the character of the older colony towns. 
The pioneer of Maine and of western Massachusetts and 
Connecticut, who had rebuilt his log house three or 
four times, and who tilled his field with a gun slung 
across his shoulders, had perforce to be a man of pur- 
pose and of perseverance, with little time for anything 
save the business of getting a living and rearing a fam- 
ily of children. Yet to his descendants he gave a heri- 
tage of traditions of democracy, religion, and education ; 
when they reached man's estate, they did as their father 
had done, — took up a search for a new home where 
land was cheaper than in the older settlement,^ and 
when that home was found, they made it their business 
to see the town-meeting, the church, and the school 
established as their fathers had founded them. Whether 
the pioneer dwelt on the Maine rivers, in the wilds of 
New Hampshire, beyond the Connecticut River, in New 
Jersey, or in South Carolina, his traditions and his gen- 
eral character were the same. The differences were but 
superficial, and he was after all a New Englander grown 
more independent and probably more tolerant under his 
new environment; — but not even many removes from 
the Englishman of his day. 

* Another reason is given in a letter of Isaac Addington to Fitz-John 
Winthrop in Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., 6th ser., iii, 338 ; it is dated Boston, 
July 1, 1706. " His Excellency [Governor of Massachusetts] thinks he 
can tell where one hundred Massachusetts men are gone into Connecticut 
Colony to save themselves from taxes and service in the present war." 



74 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 

The general works cited at the close of the second chapter are of value 
for the period 1660-1713. 

For Massachusetts, many of the books mentioned earlier prove useful 
for this chapter. Such histories as that of Worcester County (D. H. Hurd, 
compiler) furnished the only available material for certain smaller towns, 
and the Massachusetts Historical Society Collections must be called into 
constant requisition. Henry D. Nourse's History of Harvard, Massachit- 
setts (Harvard, 1894), is one of the better class of local histories. 

There are a few excellent local histories for Connecticut towns planted 
in this period, which supplement admirably the more general works such 
as Trumbull's. Miss F, M. Caulkins's History of New London (New Lon- 
don, 1852) and History of Norwich are illustrations, as are William Coth- 
ren's History of Ancient Woodbury, Connecticut (3 vols.), and Miss E. D. 
Larned's History of Windham County (2 vols.). Dr. Charles H. S. Davis's 
History of Wallingford (Meriden, 1870) contains the compact under which 
Wallingford was settled. Dr. C. W. Bowen's Woodstock is the work of a 
scholar. Dr. Franklin B. Dexter has published in compact form the data 
concerning the early years of Yale College in his Sketch of the History of 
Yale University (New York, 1887). 

For Rhode Island the following local histories, — C. C. Beaman, His- 
torical Sketch of the Town of Scituate, R. I. (1877) ; Rev. Frederic Deni- 
son's Westerly {Rhode Island) and its Witnesses, 1Q2Q-1S1Q ; and D. H. 
Greene's History of the Town of East Greenwich and Adjacent Territory 
(from 1677 to 1877) proved helpful. 

Barber and Howe's Historical Collections of the State of New Jersey 
(New York, 1846) is a good starting-point for the emigration to that ter- 
ritory. William A. Whitehead's East Jersey under the Proprietary Gov- 
ernments is still a standard work for the field it covers. Joseph Atkinson's 
History of Newark, and the Rev. Dr. E. F. Hatfield's History of Elizabeth 
(including the early history of Union County) are excellent, as is L. T. 
Stevens's History of Cape May County. Joseph F. Tuttle read a paper 
before the New Jersey Historical Society in May, 1869, on Annals of 
Morris County, which is published in pamphlet form. The Proceedings of 
the New Jersey Historical Society contain some interesting material. But 
the material for the study of New Jersey local history shows that much 
labor must be expended before a final piece of work can be done which 
shall interpret its history along the lines attempted in this study. 



INFLUENCE OF INDIAN WARFARE 75 

The Collections of the N'ew York Historical Society (1st ser., 5 vols., 
1811-1830) contain in volume i the "Duke's Laws." Daniel Denton's 
Brief Description of New Fork (London, 1670, but reprinted 1902) is a 
valuable, contemporary account of that colony as it was at the time the 
English wrested it from the Dutch. 

The early charters, such as those of Connecticut, Rhode Island, the 
Massachusetts charter of 1692, and the New Jersey grant and first code 
of laws will be found in carefully compiled form in Dr. William Mac- 
donald's Select Charters and Other Documents Illustrative of American His- 
tory, 1606-1775. Each document is preceded by a brief account of its 
history, and a well-selected bibliography. 

Such admirably compiled histories as that of The Doane Family (by A. 
A. Doane, Boston, 1902) prove most valuable in giving items not other- 
wise available as to the emigrations of a family in whom the pioneering 
instinct was strongly developed. 

For the Dorchester (South Carolina) colony, see Edward McCrady, 
History of South Carolina under the Proprietary Government. 1670-1719 
(3 vols., New York, 1897), and the History of . . . Dorchester, Massachusetts, 
published by the Antiquarian and Historical Society of that town in 1859. 



CHAPTER IV 

FORTY YEARS OF STRIFE WITH THE WILDERNESS 
1713-1754 

For forty years almost ceaseless warfare had been waged 
along the New England frontier. The outposts of the 
colonies had seen a succession of Indian raids, and the 
history of many a village was one of alternate destruc- 
tion and replanting. Even the hardiest pioneer shrank 
from the prospect of carving a new home out of the for- 
ests on the outskirts of any colony ; for the future was 
reasonably certain to bring disaster, and he and his fam- 
ily might think themselves fortunate if they escaped 
with their lives. But the forty years had seen a con- 
stantly increasing density of population, and with the 
Peace of Utrecht there came an outpouring of settlers 
bound for the frontier, where there was no danger of 
being crowded by one's neighbors. 

The treaty of Utrecht began a period of comparative 
peace which lasted for more than a quarter of a century.^ 
Indian raids had been common since King Philip's 
War ; Ryswick had been an unsatisfactory settlement, 
a temporary expedient. Utrecht marked the end of act- 
ive hostility, though the pioneers on the edge of the 
wilderness were sometimes threatened by the Indian 

* The series of campaigns against the Indians of northern and eastern 
Maine known as Lovewell's War, covering the period 1722-25, affected 
settlement chiefly in Maine, and consequently is not taken up in detail 
in this study. See Williamson, Maine, ii, 111-151. 



FORTY YEARS OF STRIFE WITH THE WILDERNESS 77 

bands which roved through the nearby forests. By the 
terms of the treaty England had come into possession 
of Nova Scotia, while to the northwest the Iroquois had 
been acknowledged to be tributary to the British nation. 
The period of peace following the war of 1713 was of 
immense importance to the colonists ; it made possible 
the expansion of trade, commerce, and settlement ; it 
gave opportunity for the quiet development of colonial 
institutions ; it saw the foundations laid upon which 
New England, together with the rest of the colonies, 
built a social, political, and economic fabric which was 
to withstand the assaults of a later time ; and it furnished 
the materials for the making of a new nation on this 
side of the Atlantic. Settlements were planted to the 
west and north, and were sufficiently peopled, so that 
when King George's War again let loose bands of In- 
dians upon the frontier the struggle was but an episode, 
a time of apprenticeship for the greater conflict to fol- 
low. 

After the treaty of Utrecht, then, the expansion of 
colonial settlements was resumed. A lesson had been 
learned from the years of warfare just preceding the 
peace, years in which isolated villages had been destroyed 
time and again ; and the Massachusetts grants of the 
next few years contain provisions for larger groups of 
settlers on a new tract than had hitherto been the case. 
The conditions in Worcester County are typical of 
others. In the case of Rutland * the purchase made from 

* The grant was made in 1715. Families were gathered from Boston, 
Concord, Lexington, Sudbury, Marlborough, Framingham, Lancaster, and 
Brookfield, with a few from Ireland. See C. R. Bartlett, '' Rutland," in 
History of Worcester County, ii, 1287-1288. 



78 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

the Indians in 1686 was confirmed by the General Court 
in 1713, on condition that within seven years sixty fami- 
lies should be planted there ; the condition was fulfilled, 
and the town was incorporated. In the Leicester grant 
the number of families was to be fifty, with the provi- 
sion that a portion of the tract allotted be reserved for a 
church and a school ; otherwise the conditions were like 
those of Rutland ; but the progress of Leicester was very 
slow, because of the isolation of the settlers. Even so 
large a number as fifty seemed defenseless when no 
neighbors could be called in at a crisis. Lunenburg was 
filled up by Scotch-Irish families, who moved in beside 
settlers from other New England towns.^ Sturbridge is 
another Worcester County town. In 1714 a few grants 
of land were made here ; a Httle later a committee was 
appointed to lay out the town ; and in 1729 the grant 
was made on the terms which had become usual, — a cer- 
tain number of families had to be established within a 
definite time. At least twelve of the grantees became set- 
tlers : many others sent their children and grandchildren. 
Since nearly all the proprietors and settlers were from 
Medfield, the town was called New Medfield until its 
incorporation.^ Almost the whole of Worcester County 
was taken up by home-seekers ; the greater part of it had 
been passed by previously because of its exposed situa- 
tion, and because its uneven surface was less attractive 
to home-seekers than the more level lands of the Con- 

^ E. S. Stearns, " Lunenburg," in Hist, of Worcester County, i, 761, 
762 ; Barber, Hist. Coll. of Mass., 582. Other Scotch-Irish, who came at 
this time, settled Palmer, Coleraine, Hopkinton, Blandford, and Pelham. 

2 L. B. Chase, " Sturbridge," in ibid., i, 105-107. 



FORTY YEARS OF STRIFE WITH THE WILDERNESS 79 

necticut valley. The intervale lands to the west being 
well filled, newcomers stopped midway and took up the 
less desirable Worcester County lands. 

Nor was the pressure for new lands confined to the 
seaboard. The soil along both sides of the Connecticut 
was all occupied, and yet lands lay vacant to the west, 
between the older towns and the Hudson River. In 1722 
Joseph Parson and one hundred and seventy-six other 
persons of Hampshire County in Massachusetts petitioned 
the General Court for two townships on the Housatonic 
River. Into one of these, Sheffield, in accordance with 
the provisions laid down by the General Court, settlers 
poured to the number of sixty families, mostly from 
Westfield, in the seven years preceding the first town- 
meeting in 1733. South Hadley and Granby were set- 
tled from Hadley. Amherst had among its pioneers 
families from Hadley, Hatfield, Deerfield, and North- 
ampton, many of whom seem to have been young, un- 
married men. Poor soil had prevented the settlement of 
Ware, but between 1729, when the first family moved 
in from Brookfield and " squatted " there, and 1742, 
when the settlers petitioned for incorporation, thirty- 
three families had established themselves on the tract.* 

Berkshire County, on the border between Massachu- 
setts and New York, attracted pioneers from both direc- 
tions, and in Egremont and Great Barrington, New Eng- 
landers and Dutch families mingled. The proprietors of 

* Hyde, Ware, 12-14. To Wales went settlers from Salem, Palmer, and 
Grafton, in Massachusetts ; from Windham, Tolland, Hampton, and 
Union, in Connecticut. The settlers organized a Baptist church of thirty 
members within six years of their arrival. See Holland, West. Mass.^ U, 
140. 



80 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

these western towns were usually Massachusetts men, but 
most of the settlers came up from Connecticut, follow- 
ing the rich intervale lands of the Housatonic. The sev- 
enty-two proprietors of New Marlborough were mainly 
Marlborough (Massachusetts) men. They represent the 
speculator element, for very few of them ever lived in 
New Marlborough ; the settlers came from Canterbury 
and Suffield, Connecticut, Northampton and Dedham in 
Massachusetts.^ Connecticut settlers founded Alford. 
The proprietors of Sandisfield were Worcester County 
men ; the settlers were from the Connecticut towns of 
Enfield and Wethersfield, and from Cape Cod towns.^ 
To Lenox went pioneers from West Hartford and Wall- 
ingford, Connecticut ; while Otis settlers represented 
Enfield, Granville, Suffield, Woodstock, and Hebron, 
though the proprietors were from Tyringham (Massa- 
chusetts).^ Williamstown was begun by Connecticut fam- 
ilies, mingling with others from Northampton and Hat- 
field ; * Wethersfield men founded Pittsfield.^ One might 
reasonably expect to find at the time of the Revolution 
what is actually the case, — that western Massachusetts 
supplied the most radical element in the new state. Not 
only had the western part been settled last, and there- 
fore was scarcely beyond the pioneering stage of its his- 
tory, but its inhabitants were drawn largely from an- 

' Barber, Hist. Coll. of Mass., 83. 

» Holland, West. Mass., ii, 569-571. 

» Holland, ibid., ii, 540. 

« Perry, Origins of Williamstotm, 384-386 ; Holland, West. Mass., u, 
609, 610. 

5 Holland, ibid., i, 186 ; ibid., ii, 648, 549; Barber, Hist. Coll. of Mass., 
87. 



FORTY YEARS OF STRIFE WITH THE WILDERNESS 81 

other colony (Connecticut), and therefore had no special 
reverence for the conservatism of the Massachusetts 
coast towns. Built up by men with sufficient initiative 
to move to the most exposed part of the colony, the 
border counties developed a most independent attitude 
towards England in the early part of the Revolution, 
and towards the conservative seaboard while the new 
state was forming. 

A new feature entered into the movement for expan- 
sion at this time, and colored more or less the character 
of the whole period up to the beginning of the French 
and Indian War. For the first time speculation in lands 
became common. With the economic, social, and indus- 
trial changes incident to a century of growth and devel- 
opment, there had come not only the accumulation of 
wealth, but the necessity for its investment. The fishing 
and coasting trade occupied many persons ; ordinary 
mercantile pursuits provided occupations for more ; but 
the demand for lands which came with the Peace of 
Utrecht offered an outlet for the speculative tendencies 
of others, and many young men became proprietors, 
making a business of buying lands and selling them at 
a higher figure to actual settlers. Such speculations in 
land became an increasingly significant and important 
feature of the process of expansion. England was pass- 
ing through a period of speculative craze which was to 
find its climax in the wild schemes of 1720, — such as 
the gigantic " bubbles " of John Law, and other less 
well-known " promoters " of the day. The colonies felt 
the wave which was sweeping over the mother country, 
although to a far less degree, since the number of en- 



82 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

terprises to be affected was very small, and the new 
country had neither capital nor capitalists enough for 
the movement to be of any great importance. 

The Massachusetts speculations are the most import- 
ant, and are probably typical of less extensive ones in 
the other colonies. The older and more prosperous 
towns, like Boston and Salem, where there was not only 
more experience in business life but also more capital 
free for investment, showed a marked disposition to buy 
wild lands in new towns, and whatever could be pur- 
chased of the commons in the old ones.^ Mr. Jeremiah 
Dummer, an English agent, apparently imbued with the 
speculative mania then raging in England, tried to get 
up a *' bubble " in waste lands in 1720, " but had not 
time for any great success."^ The first extensive specu- 
lation came in 1727. The Massachusetts government 
had been very prudent before that time in the granting 
of territory, and lands had been distributed purely for 
the sake of settlement. As a usual thing new grants had 
adjoined old ones, making the towns reasonably com- 
pact, both as a defense against Indians, and in order 
that advantages of church and schools might be com- 
mon to all. Now plans were suddenly laid for large 
grants of new lands along the border between Massa- 
chusetts and New Hampshire. Undoubtedly, Lieutenant- 
Governor William Dummer, who was most instrumental 
in getting the General Court to appoint committees and 
make grants, had in mind strengthening the claim of 
Massachusetts to the disputed lands of her northern 

^ Weeden, Econ. and Soc. Hist, of New Eng., ii, 513. 
^Hutchinson, Hist, of Mass., ii, 221, n. 



FORTY TEARS OF STRIFE WITH THE WILDERNESS 83 

neighbor, as well as a plan which should aid in the 
effort for relieving the pressure of an increasing popu- 
lation in the seaboard towns. Nine townships were 
granted in 1727 to the heirs of the militia or soldiers 
who had taken part in the Canadian expedition of 1690. 
These tracts, each six miles square, ran from the Merri- 
mac River across thirty-five miles of unoccupied land, to 
the Connecticut River, in order to provide a barrier 
against Indians. They formed a double line of varying 
value for cultivation, some being rocky and moun- 
tainous, and hence slowly settled, while others containing 
good land were quickly occupied.* In June, 1728, the 
General Court of Massachusetts appointed a committee 
(five in number) to lay out in some of the vacant lands 
of the Maine district two tracts of land in townships six 
miles square. These were granted to officers and soldiers 
(or their heirs) who had fought in the Narragansett 
War of 1675. The report of the committee having been 
accepted, five other townships were laid out in 1732, 
on condition that the one hundred and twenty grantees 
of each township should assemble within two months 
and arrange the preliminaries of settlement. Further- 
more, sixty families must be settled in each township, 
with an orthodox minister, within seven years. These 
townships lay in a Hne from the Saco and Presump- 
scot rivers in Maine, across into New Hampshire. The 
grantees included men from about all the towns that 

* Ashbarnham (called Dorchester Canada, because most of the grantees 
were Dorchester men) was settled in 1735-36 ; it was deserted from 1744 
to 1750, and had a precarious existence till 1759. See E. S. Stearns, 
" Ashbarnham," in Hist, of Worcester Co., i, 194. 



84 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

were able to send soldiers in 1675 to the defense of tLe 
colonies, and were grouped somewhat roughly by neigh- 
borhoods/ In 1736-38, twenty-eight townships (each 
six miles square) were laid out between the Connecticut 
and Merrimac rivers, in accordance with the surveys 
which the General Assembly of Massachusetts had 
caused to be made in response to the very numerous 
petitions for land which had been laid before them.^ 
The speculators proved too grasping; because of the 
great number of grants made, it was impossible to ful- 
fill the conditions required by the General Court. Nei- 
ther were there enough people in Massachusetts who 
were willing to move into so unpopular a district, nor 
could the grantees induce settlers to come from Eng- 

^ Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., 3d ser., ii, 274, 275. For instance, Narragansett 
No. 7 (New Gorham, Maine) was granted to men of Barnstable, Yar- 
mouth, Eastham, Sandwich, Plymouth, Tisbury, Abingdon, Duxbnry, and 
Scituate ; nearly every Cape Cod town sent settlers to it ultimately. See 
ibid., 279 ; and Pierce, Gorham, 36. 

Buxton (Narragansett No. 1) was granted to inhabitants of Ipswich, 
Newbury, Hampton, Berwick, and towns surrounding these. Mass. Hist. 
Soc. Coll., 3d ser., ii, 276. 

^ Hall's Eastern Vermont, 58. The terms of the grants made here are 
interesting. Each settler had to give bonds in the sum of £40 as security 
for performing the conditions imposed. Those who had not received grants 
for the last seven years were given the preference, but in case not enough 
of these applied, the next choice fell upon those who had fulfilled condi- 
tions elsewhere. On every lot there must be built a house eighteen by 
eighteen feet, with at least seven feet stud ; live acres had to be fenced 
in and broken up for ploughing ; and occupancy must take place within 
three years. A meeting-house had to be built, and a minister settled. If 
these conditions were not met, the land was forfeited. As usual, there 
were sixty settlers' rights, one right for the first minister, and one for a 
school ; but the sixty-third right went to the second minister ratlier than 
to the ministry, as was naturally the case. Each right was divided into a 
bouselot and an intervale lot. 



FORTY YEARS OF STRIFE WITH THE WILDERNESS 85 

land, though they evidently tried to do so/ Still the 
growth of Massachusetts in those forty years is remark- 
able. In 1748 one hundred and forty towns had been 
incorporated since the colony's founding, and of these 
sixty-eight had received charters since 1692.^ There was 
little land left for new towns east of the Connecticut 
River; about one third west of it had been taken up. 
The pressure for new lands must very evidently lead to 
emigration outside the boundaries of the colony, and 
the frontier must be pushed out into the wilderness to 
the north and west in order to furnish homes to those 
who wished to establish themselves on farms of their 
own, but were too poor to pay for higher-priced lands 
lying about the older towns. 

The acquisition of Maine by Massachusetts in 1677 
had placed those lands at the disposal of the General 
Court of the Bay Colony, and one would naturally look 
for emigration into that territory. At the close of Queen 
Anne's War more than one hundred miles of the Maine 
coast lay unpeopled and desolate. When the old towns 
were revived, it was thought advisable that for the safety 
of the inhabitants no less than twenty or thirty families 
should go at the same time and settle compactly near 
the seaside on lots of three or four acres, with outlying 
meadows about them. Upon these conditions the Gen- 
eral Court authorized the resettlement of Saco, Falmouth, 

• Hutchinson, fl'^s^ of Mass., ii, 299, 300. New Braiutree shows how the 
colony paid its debts for public services in land, — the commodity of which 
at this time it had most. The tract was granted to certain persons of 
Braintree for services rendered, and was long known as Braintree Farms. 
See Barber, Hist. Coll. of Mass., 588. 

^ Barry, Mass., ii, 163. Also footnote on the same page. 



86 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

and other towns/ Portland, Bath, and many other vil- 
lages whose territory had lain waste for forty years were 
now repeopled by the former inhabitants, or by their 
children, who returned to lay claim to their former 
homes. None grew rapidly : Bristol contained only a few 
people in 1720 ; in that year Scarborough held its first 
town-meeting ; and Portland contained in 1726 but four 
hundred people, the same population it had numbered 
fifty-one years before ; Cape Elizabeth had no church 
for fifteen years after its revival. Between 1722 and 
1725 the Indians of northern and eastern Maine and of 
Nova Scotia, urged on by emissaries of the French gov- 
ernment and by French sympathizers in the territory to 
the east so recently acquired by the English, descended 
again and again upon the reestablished settlements. 
Not until Captain John Lovewell (or Lovel) of Dun- 
stable, Massachusetts, took the field with a small body 
of volunteers did the Indians meet with any effectual 
opposition. After Love well's death in the decisive fight 
of the war, peace was concluded between representatives 
of the Indians and the Massachusetts General Court, 
ratified a little later by a larger body of Indians at Fal- 
mouth on the Maine coast. In spite of the treaty, it was 
still evident that only dire necessity could induce men 
to remove into the territory east of New Hampshire ; 
few towns were planted, and these grew but slowly, some 
even being burned once before they were permanently 
established. Of the Narragansett townships laid out by 
Massachusetts, Gorham was settled in 1736, but the 

* Williamson, Maine, ii, 80, 81. No one was allowed to undertake the 
resettlement of a town without a license from the governor and council. 



FORTY YEARS OF STRIFE WITH THE WILDERNESS 87 

grantees of Buxton left their tract vacant until 1748, 
when King George's War was over. Topsham was planted 
by three families in 1718 ; it was destroyed four years 
later, and remained a waste for some time ; in 1750 
its inhabitants numbered eighteen families, — mostly 
Scotch-Irish, who have ever been Indian fighters and 
hence good stock for the frontier. New Gloucester, 
which took its pioneers and its name from the Massa- 
chusetts town, was able to show but nineteen frame 
houses after eight years of hardship ; these were de- 
stroyed, and for twelve years the land lay desolate, 
Windham (called New Marblehead in its early days) 
had sixty proprietors who were Marblehead men, as 
were its first settlers ; it had a long struggle before its 
growth was assured.^ Maine had a severe struggle for 
existence for over a century after the first fishing- 

* Williamson, Maine, ii, 365 ; also ibid., 284. Warren and Thomas- 
ton were Scotch-Irish towns like Topsham ; Thomaston was begun by 
twenty-seven families who came together; they were later joined by a 
company of German immigrants. Compare Hanna, Scotch-Irish in Americay 
ii, 25, with Williamson, ii, 238. 

Waldoborough, settled in 1740, was depopulated during King George's 
War, but resettled immediately afterward. It had been at first a Scotch- 
Irish town ; in 1752-53 fifteen hundred Germans came in, but later re- 
moved to southwest Carolina because of threatening lawsuits regard- 
ing land-titles. See Maine Hist. Soc. Coll., v, 403, 404 ; also Coolidge and 
Mansfield, 336. 

Most of the towns laid out after 1733 had to have, as conditions of tho 
grant, sixty actual settlers, each of whom must clear from five to eight 
acres for mowing and tillage, build a house at least eighteen feet square, 
with seven-foot posts. The families must together build a meeting-house 
within five or six years, settle a minister, and support him. Usually three 
lots were reserved for the ministry, schools, and the first minister ; later a 
fourth one for the " future disposition of government." See Williamson, 
Maine, ii, 180. 



88 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

villages were planted on her shores in 1623. There was 
not in 1720 a house between Berwick and Canada to the 
north, nor between Georgetown and Annapolis Royal 
in Nova Scotia, save a single fish-cabin on Damariscove 
Island/ Even the invitation of Governor Dunbar, who 
laid out three towns in his territory of Sagadahoc 
and asked settlers to come, could only induce fifty or 
sixty to make homes there. The Lieutenant-Governor 
of Massachusetts stated that the two obstacles — and 
he considered them " the principal and perhaps only 
material " ones — which kept settlers away from Maine, 
were the " exposed situation to the Indian enemy in 
case of rupture," and the great disputes over titles, be- 
cause of overlapping grants and consequent claims.^ 

The history of New Hampshire is quite different. In 
1716 there were perhaps nine thousand persons in the 
colony, settlements being confined almost entirely to a 
radius of fifteen miles about the Piscataqua River. The 
first large town planted was Londonderry, to which there 
came, in 1719, fifty families, with ministers, from Lon- 
donderry, Ireland.^ About the same year the inhabitants 
of the older towns began to look out for new lands for 
their children, and in 1721 a company of nearly one 

' Williamson, Maine, ii, 77, n. ; also on 97 (from Commissioner's Re- 
port, 1811), testimony of P. Rogers, taken in 1773. 

^ Cited in Williamson, ii, 289. The speech was made June 12, 1753, to 
the General Court. Pierce (Hist, of Gorham, 35) thinks the population of 
Maine in 1736 could not have been more than seven thousand. 

' Bedford was founded in 1737 from this same Londonderry, and waa 
the first of ten towns in New Hampshire planted by these Scotch-Irish 
emigrants. Hanna, Scotch-Irish in America, ii, 18. Hanna says that Lon- 
donderry was also the mother of two Vermont towns and one in Penn- 
sylvania. 



FORTY YEARS OF STRIFE WITH THE WILDERNESS 89 

hundred made up from Portsmouth, Exeter, and Haver- 
hill, petitioned for a grant of land north of Londonderry. 
Immediately, petitions were filed by persons from other 
towns for lands contiguous to those asked for in the first 
petition. The governor and council suspended the peti- 
tions while they had surveys made and four townships 
laid out, and then gave permission for settlers to occupy 
them. These grants, as well as those of Massachusetts 
already mentioned (four of the so-called Narragansett 
townships), were filled up more or less slowly, most of 
the settlers coming from the nearby Massachusetts 
towns. Thirty-six Haverhill men were among the list 
of one hundred admitted settlers of Concord in 1725 ; 
Billerica and Chelmsford families pushed up into Litch- 
field and Amherst, while others from Haverhill planted 
Atkinson. Rochester, in a petition to the General Court 
relative to settling a minister, gave sixty families as set- 
tlers in the seven years since the town was begun, but 
reported that Indian troubles kept others away. Pem- 
broke (Suncook), in a petition for a guard, recited how 
peculiarly liable the people were to attacks from Indians, 
since they were "eighteen or twenty miles from any 
place" :* Canterbury was threatened in the same way, as 
were Bedford and Charlestown. Swanzey and Hillsbor- 
ough were actually deserted for several years, as was New 
Boston, upon which the proprietors had spent £2000 in 
"promoting settlements and improvements," apparently 
■with little success.^ The number of frontier towns in 
1745 on the Connecticut River was six ; on the Merrimac 

1 Hammond, Town Papers, xiii, 153, 154. 
' See Cogswell, New Boston, 44. 



90 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

River, the same number ; and on the Piscataqua, three/ 
The story of the New Hampshire frontier, then, was a 
recital of hardship and often of danger, yet population 
had perhaps doubled, and a map shows considerable ex- 
pansion in the extent of settlement.^ 

The first pioneers in Vermont came during this 
period, and five settlements were begun before 1754. 
Fort Dummer had a few families in 1724 ; Vernon, then 
a part of Hinsdale in New Hampshire, drew some set- 
tlers from Northampton and Northfield about 1744-45 ; 
at both places there was a fort, under whose shadows 
the first comers made shift to live. A few clearino-s had 
been made at Westminster, but during King George's 
War they were abandoned ; when the settlement was 
revived, fifty families came within a short time, mostly 
from Northfield, and from Ashford and Middletown.^ 

The growth of Rhode Island consisted not in forming 
new settlements, for all the land in the colony was al- 
ready allotted to the various towns ; but the population 
was rapidly increasing in density. The figures are sig- 
nificant. From 7181 in 1708, the inhabitants increased 
in number to 17,935 in 1730, and to 32,773 in 1748, 

1 Belknap, ii, 238, 239. 

2 Barstow, New Hampshire, 186. Barstow thinks it had doubled since 
1731, and was in 1749 thirty thousand. This is evidently only a good guess. 

3 Thompson, Hist, of Vermont, pt. iii, 187 ; Coolidgeand Mansfield, 939. 
Dummerston had settlers from Worcester, Sturbridge, Petersham, Boston, 
Rutland, Cambridge, and Deerfield, all in Massachusetts ; from Pomfret, 
Connecticut ; and from Winchester in New Hampshire. All of these came 
between 1754 and 1777. Rockingham was deserted during the French 
and Indian War ; it had been begun in 1753. See D. L. Mansfield, in Ver- 
mont Hist. Gazetteer, v, pt. ii, 70-73, 24, 33, 41, 58. Also Hall, Eastern 
Vermont, 101. 



FORTY YEARS OF STRIFE WITH THE WILDERNESS 91 

an increase of over three hundred per cent in forty 
years/ Five counties had been erected by 1751, and old 
towns like Providence and Newport were divided to 
incorporate their outlying portions into new towns.^ 
The final adjustment of the boundary between Massa- 
chusetts and Rhode Island had given to the latter the 
five towns lying below East Providence, — Bristol, 
Tiverton, Little Compton, Warren, and Cumberland, — 
thus increasing the colony's area quite materially, and 
adding about four thousand souls to its population.' 

Connecticut settlers had been very active in moving 
up into western Massachusetts, following the Housatonic 
valley j they were also going from all parts of the colony 
into their own undivided western lands. The population 
had been ready to swarm before the peace of Utrecht ; 
when the war was definitely ended, and the lands were 
clear for settlement, the movement to the west began. 
As in Massachusetts, the speculative element entered 
in, and grantees became proprietors, selling the lands 
the General Court had allotted to those who were will- 
ing to become actual settlers. Willington will illustrate 
the movement. A few families settled on the lands here 

1 The number for 1730 includes 985 Indians ; for 1748, 1257 Indians. 
How much of this was due to immigration it would of course be diffi- 
cult to say. Besides this increase, settlers may have left to live in Narra- 
gansett townships, whose grantees included men from Rhode Island towns ; 
but it is probable that these grantees sold their shares, since no settlers 
are enumerated from that colony. See for figures, R. I. Col. Rec, iv, 59 ; 
V, 270 ; Arnold, Hist, of Rhode Island, ii, 101. 

' R. I. Col. Rec, iv, 442, 443. Scituate, Gloucester, and Smithfield were 
set off from Providence. Middletown was incorporated from Newport. 
Ibid., V, 66. Also Arnold, Hist, of Rhode Island, ii, 102. 

» Greene, Hist, of Rhode Island, 168-169. 



92 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

about 1715-20 ; in the latter year the tract (seven 
by five miles) was sold by the colony for £510 to 
Eoger Wolcott of Windsor, John Burr of Fairfield, 
John Riggs of Derby, two Milford men, and two from 
Hartford, who evidently intended the purchase to be a 
speculation. These proprietors secured " planters " from 
various parts of New England, who moved to the land 
one after another, in no organized company ; but by 
1728 there were twenty-eight ratable polls here, and a 
minister was settled. Litchfield affords another typical 
illustration. In 1718 sixty proprietors (chiefly from 
Hartford, Windsor, and Lebanon) bought the tract 
from the colony, and the next year settlement began. 
A considerable number from Hartford and Windsor 
went to the new town in 1721, with an organized com- 
pany from Lebanon who took their minister with them. 
There were sixty " rights " in the town,^ three of them 
for the church, the first minister, and the school. A few 
years later, when the town was threatened by Indians, 
thirty-two able-bodied men were sent by the council to 
defend it. An order followed shortly that any person who 
had left Litchfield and did not return within a month 
of the close of the Assembly for that year must either 
send a man for watch and ward, or forfeit his estate.^ 
Hartford and Windsor patentees received in 1729 a 
grant of four towns in the northern part of the colony, 
— Hartland, Winchester, Torrington, Barkhamstead, 
Colebrook, New Hartford, and Harwinton. The last two 

' Conn. Col. Rec, vi, 126. 

2 Conn. Col. Rec, vi, 126, 127, 471, 472, 500, 501. Also Barber, Hist. 
Coll. of Conn., 452-455. Sixty-one rights in the town were sold at auction. 
Trumbull, Connecticut, ii, 89. 



FORTY YEARS OF STRIFE WITH THE WILDERNESS 93 

were settled shortly after from Hartford and Windsor ; 
Torrington a little later still (from Windsor), but Bark- 
hamstead had but one settler till 1759/ Under an act of 
1737 " for the ordering and directing the sale and set- 
tlement of all the townships in the Western lands," 
seven townships were laid out along the Housatonic, — 
five on the eastern side, and two on the western. These 
townships were then sold at auction in various towns of 
the colony ; bonds were required for double the purchase 
price, with one good surety. Six of the seven towns ful- 
filled the conditions upon which they had been granted, 
— that actual settlers be obtained who would build a 
house of required size within three years and live in it 
for three years afterward, and that the inhabitants col- 
lectively have within a specified time an organized church 
with a minister.^ 

Besides the settlement of these new towns, old com- 
munities were splitting up into new parishes, which in 

» Trumbull, Connecticut, ii, 99-102, 104, 105, 111, 113. 

^ Conn. Col. Rec, viii, 134-137. Salisbury and Norfolk were sold at Hart- 
ford, Goshen and Sharon at New Haven, Kent (including Warren) at 
Windham, Canaan at New London, and Cornwall at Fairfield. Goshen 
was settled by families not only from New Haven, but from Wallingford, 
Farmington, Litchfield, Durham, and Simsbury ; Kent, from Colchester, 
Fairfield, and Nor walk ; Sharon, from Colchester and Lebanon ; Cornwall, 
chiefly from Plainfield, but also from Litchfield, Colchester, Norwalk, Tol- 
land, and Middlebury (Massachusetts). Barber, 463, 465, 467, 470, 481, 
490. 

Norfolk was forfeited because of non-fulfillment of the requirements, 
and was resold at Middletown in 1754, when but one shareholder claimed 
his grant on the ground of having had four families settled there before 
1774. All of the settlers moved into these towns by way of the Housatonic 
or by way of New York. See Barber, 481. Also Trumbull, Connecticut, ii, 
112. The proceeds of the sale of these townships went into Connecticut's 
school fund. 



94 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

a few years came to be separate towns. In 1738 fourteen 
families, who lived in a distant part of the town of 
Woodbury, petitioned that they might have " winter 
privileges " for five months ; they complained of the dis- 
tance which it was necessary for them to traverse on cold 
Sundays to get to the Woodbury church, and asked not 
only to be relieved from support of the old church for 
five months, but also to be allowed to have preaching 
of their own for that length of time. This petition was 
granted ; the next year saw a separate church, and 
though the district was not incorporated as the town 
of Bethlehem for many years, its separate existence was 
assured from the time it became a distinct parish. Wash- 
ington, another outlying part of Woodbury, followed the 
example of Bethlehem, and became a separate society. 
The people of Canton (which had been settled by Sims- 
bury families as part of that town and New Hartford) 
began to hold services of their own in 1741, but they 
did not withdraw definitely from the Simsbury church 
and have their own minister till six years later.^ It was 
not until 1750, however, that a distinctly separate parish 
was made. 

The population of Connecticut, estimated from replies 
to questions of the Board of Trade in England, were 

* Phelps, Simsbury, 141. There are Instances of the same sort in Massa- 
chusetts. Certain inhabitants of Brookfield, Palmer, and Brimfield, dis- 
satisfied with the inconvenience they suffered because of their distance 
from churches and schools, petitioned the General Court that they be in- 
corporated. Millbury was made a parish of Sutton in 1743, with a sepa- 
rate church, upon petition to the General Court. See W. T. Davis, " War- 
ren," in Hist, of Worcester Co., ii, 1185 ; J. C. Crane, " Millbury," in 
ibid., 1092. 



FORTY YEARS OF STRIFE WITH THE WILDERNESS 95 

given in 1730 as thirty-eight thousand; in 1749 the 
•white population was reported to the same body as 
seventy thousand. By that time all of Connecticut had 
been laid off into towns and contained settlers, save 
three tracts on the Massachusetts border, west of the 
Connecticut River. 

Long Island remained practically as it was in the pre- 
ceding period ; the only new settlement was made in 1730 
at Sag Harbor, when a few cottages were erected for 
the convenience of the fisher-folk who had lived there 
temporarily. The older towns grew more populous, and 
the plantations, through the thrift of their inhabitants, 
became too limited for the increasing number of resid- 
ents. A veritable swarming time came about 1740-50, 
when many famiUes went to the eastern shore of New 
Jersey, a large number moving to Cape May County.* 
By far the largest emigration was to Westchester and to 
Dutchess County in New York, where in the Phillipse 
patent and the Nine Partners tract many former Long 
Islanders found new homes.^ Putnam County on the 
Hudson was wild and unpopulated in 1740, when the 
first settlers came from Cape Cod and from Suffield in 
Connecticut.^ In 1741 the first emigration to Delaware 
County, then far beyond the edge of settlement, took 
place, moving the frontier to a considerable distance 

* See map opposite. 

' Flint, Early Long Island, 337. New England families moved over 
into New York in this period also, but it is difficult to trace them. 

8 Blake, Putnam County, 288, 301, 322, 327, 328, 336. In the Doane 
Family History, 74, 75, one Elnathan Doane is given as an emigrant with 
his family from Eastliam on Cape Cod to what is now Doanesburg in 
Putnam County, New York. He went about 1755. 



96 



THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 



west of the Hudson. The hardy Scotch-Irish who had 
over twenty years before located homes in Londonderry, 
New Hampshire, now furnished the pioneers to Cherry 
Valley in Delaware County. In the latter part of the 
decade 1740-50, settlers came from Connecticut, 
Massachusetts, and Long Island to Orange County, giv- 
ing a strong New England character especially to the 
southern part.^ 

A movement farther afield has already been noted 
in the Dorchester colony of South Carolina. In 1752, 

when Georgia was 
but a score of years 
old, a committee 
was sent from this 
transplanted New 
England town to 
secure a new grant 
in Oglethorpe's ter- 
ritory. Two rea- 
sons were alleged 
for the project : 
first, that there was not sufficient ungranted land in the 
vicinity of the South Carolina settlement to provide new 
homes for the sons and daughters just growing up : 
and second, that the South Carolina site had never 
been a healthy one. The required permission was 
granted by the Georgia authorities, who allotted 22,400 
acres to the newcomers. During the year 1752 it has 
been estimated that over eight hundred men, women, 
and children went to the new tract, called Medway. 

* Eager, Orange County, 46, 47, 422. See map opposite p. 95. 




FORTY YEARS OF STRIFE WITH THE WILDERNESS 97 

Eventually almost all the colony moved to the new 
home, but in Colleton County of South Carolina there 
are still families of New England stock, as there doubt- 
less are in other nearby towns.* The Medway settle- 
ment preserved its character as a Puritan community, 
even while it adapted itself to the necessities of South- 
ern agriculture. At the time of the Revolution the 
sympathy of these transplanted New Englanders with 
their Massachusetts kinsfolk was so strong that they 
collected two hundred barrels of rice and £50 to send 
to the victims of the Boston Port Bill, renamed their 
district Liberty County, and made themselves ob- 
noxious in other ways to Sir James Wright, their gov- 
ernor, who deplored "their strong tincture of . . . 
Oliverian principles." ^ Led by Dr. Lyman Hall, a na- 
tive of Wallingford, Connecticut, who was numbered 
among the first emigrants to Medway, the Puritan col- 
ony in Liberty County did good service by inducing 
Georgia to ally herself with the patriot cause. It was 
this same Dr. Hall who signed the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence for Georgia, and who became governor of 
the new state in 1783. 

The time had come when settlements had spread so 
far from the older towns that neither the natural hi^h- 
ways which the rivers afforded, the Indian trails, nor 
the weU-known roads like the old Connecticut path were 

» McCrady, in his South Carolina, i, 326, 327, 707, 708, gives some his- 
tory of this New England centre in the South. But apparently no one has 
made a detailed study of it. 

' In a letter to the Earl of Dartmouth, dated April 24, 1775. It ia 
cited in White's Hist. Coll. of Georgia, 523. The settlement was often 
called Midway. 



98 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

sufficient for communicatioQ between the new towns and 
the older ones along the coast. The movement in all the 
colonies for public improvements like bridges and ferries 
indicates probably increased prosperity, since higher 
taxes were of course the outgrowth of legislation on the 
subject. But while money was expended upon bridges and 
ferries, the unscientific and uneconomic process of " work- 
ing out " road taxes continued to be the usual method 
till much later, and is even at the present time approved 
in many rural districts throughout almost the entire 
country. Much of the so-called road-making about 1750 
was merely cutting wider a long-used Indian trail. Rhode 
Island was especially active in building bridges, provid- 
ing ferries, improving old roads and constructing new 
ones, so that all parts of the colony might be in com- 
munication with one another. A committee was chosen 
in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, in 1743, to "lay out and 
mark a way to the west line of the town, in order to 
answer the request ... on behalf of Ipswich Canada 
[Winchendon], and to accommodate Dorchester Canada 
[Ashburnham] and the new towns above us." The road 
throuj^h Lunenburo; and Fitchburg; was a well-known 
thoroughfare ; a part of it was the old " Crown Point 
Road," the famous Indian route from Canada to the 
Connecticut River and eastward.^ Long a thoroughfare 
from the coast to Lake Champlain, the eastern end of 
it was now improved and made available for much traffic 
as far as Lunenburg. In New Hampshire a thirty-mile 

* It ran from a point on Lake Champlain a few miles south of Brown 
Point through the woods to Otter Creek, up which it passed to the high- 
lands, over these to West River, and down that stream and Black River 
to the Connecticut. See Hall, Eastern Vermont, 21. 



FORTY YEARS OF STRIFE WITH THE WILDERNESS 99 

road was cut from Dover to Cocheco Falls. Such im- 
provements were common in all the colonies except Maine, 
where the towns lay close to the shore or to rivers, so 
that the natural waterways furnished sufficient facilities 
for transportation and communication between the set- 
tlements. There was not in that district as yet sufficient 
indication of prosperity to warrant any increase of taxes 
or expenditures for public improvements. 

Enough has been said of the progress of settlement 
to make it apparent that the years from 1713 to 1754 
were characterized by conflicting tendencies: on the 
one hand was the pressure exerted by an increasingly 
dense population to thrust the less prosperous, the discon- 
tented, the ambitious, and the more adventurous elements 
out into the newer parts of the colonies.^ The well-to-do 
classes, prosperous merchants, lawyers with lucrative 
practices, capitalists of all sorts, are always disinclined 
to move away from their homes ; they are every- 
where the conservative element in their community. 
They are also comparatively few ; but their interests 
attach others to them, and only the more ambitious of 
their underworkers seek to establish themselves in busi- 
ness ventures of their own. Many will naturally move 
into the more recently planted towns ; but there is always 
a more radical element which loves the unrestricted life 
of a pioneer community, and chafes under the restraints 
of a solidified economic and social condition. With this 
radical element there combines another made up commonly 
of young men (frequently unmarried) who have not the 
capital to buy a farm in the neighborhood in which they 

' See map opposite. 



100 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

were reared, but can gather together enough money to buy 
a tract in the wilderness. This they cultivate, to the new 
log cabins they bring their brides, and here they raise 
their families. Upon these elements was the pressure 
exerted which drove them out into the wilderness. 

This pressure was, in the period under discussion, 
intensified by the development of a mania for speculation 
in wild lands. It has been shown how both Massachu- 
setts and Connecticut felt this craze, and sold town- 
ships to grantees who never intended to occupy the 
lands so obtained, but meant to re-sell them and pocket 
the profits. Even in older communities, such as Boston, 
Hartford, and New Haven, there were not many enter- 
prises which invited new capital, besides the stereotyped 
ones of lumbering, fishing, whaling, and trading occu- 
pations by sea, and the mercantile life in its various 
phases by land. Capital would undoubtedly have been 
attracted to manufacturing schemes had not the English 
Parliament suppressed any budding plan by repressive 
legislation. The manufacture of felt hats, of various 
commodities of iron, and of woolen cloth received atten- 
tion at the hands of those British manufacturers who 
feared competition. The attitude of the mother country 
was by 1754 well known ; — she would be invariably 
hostile to any movement which looked toward changing 
the character of the colonies from producers of raw 
materials and consumers of English manufactures.^ In- 
dustry was thus kept comparatively little diversified, 

* See G. L. Beer, Commercial Policy of England toward the American 
Colonies, in "Columbia University Studies in History and Political 
Science," vol. iii, no. 2. 



FORTY YEARS OF STRIFE WITH THE WILDERNESS 101 

and opportunities for the outlay of surplus capital were 
not numerous. In the unappropriated land of the col- 
onies, however, lay an opportunity for investment upon 
which such men as Roger Wolcott had seized/ The 
time was as yet not ripe for success in these speculative 
enterprises; the grants made were too numerous, and 
the demand for settlers within the required three or 
seven years was too great to be met by the supply 
of those either here or abroad who were willingf to 
go to a frontier threatened by hostile Indians. Yet 
these speculations added to the influences enumerated 
above, and exerted considerable pressure upon the fami- 
lies to move out into the unoccupied parts of the 
colonies. 

The pressure outward was at the same time met by a 
counter-pressure which tended to keep back settlers. 
The Indians were still numerous and still hostile ; the 
Peace of Utrecht was not, after all, to be a permanent 
assurance of safety. It was evident soon after 1713 
that in the more remote settlements, though conditions 
were improved, life was still destined to be strenuous ; 
that the farmer must plough with one hand and hold 
a gun in the other. As time went on, Maine, New 
Hampshire, and western Massachusetts towns were 
especially liable to attack from the northwest, for the 
Iroquois and their friends, held by only a slender leash, 
found forests no real barrier, and the Crown Point 
Road a convenient highway for occasional attack and 
retreat. Even Connecticut, a reasonably well-protected 
colony because of its compact settlement, had its trials 

* See bis purchase of Connecticut lands, page 92. 



102 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

from Indians, "who raided Litchfield in 1722. The 
authorities of New France, who evidently carried out 
instructions from Paris, had kept the Indians on the 
alert ever since 1713 ; when the War of the Austrian 
Succession brought France and England again face to 
face in a struggle with colonial possessions for the 
prize, the train had been laid ready for immediate 
encounters. As before, the Indians were the foes most 
dreaded, and these the French urged on. Maine, New 
Hampshire, and Massachusetts all suffered ; towns were 
deserted, the families fleeing to the older settlements to 
remain till peace was restored. The frontier line held in 
the main, however ; but it was not extended noticeably, 
for it speedily became evident that the treaty of 1748 
was but an armed truce, and that the conflict would be 
renewed, and renewed speedily. Even the hardiest hes- 
itated to plant a new home in the wilderness, when 
massacre and fire threatened him at any moment, and 
if he luckily escaped with his life, his labor was gone 
for nothing in the pillage and desolation which were 
sure to follow. Consequently, almost no new settle- 
ments were planted during the last ten years of the 
period. 

"With fear of Indians was joined the difficulty of 
getting clear titles to lands. Ignoran.ce of the geography 
of the country had resulted in overlapping grants of 
various sorts, — in Maine to different individuals, in 
the other colonies to indefinite boundaries set by the 
charters ; so that a grantee of a tract on the western 
Connecticut border might go to his new possessions 
only to find them occupied by a Dutch settler who held 



FORTY YEARS OF STRIFE WITH THE WILDERNESS 103 

his title from New York/ The settlement of Maine was 
retarded, also, because of these controversies over over- 
lapping grants, and the consequent fear that all the 
toils and privations of beginning frontier homes would 
end at last in total loss. Life in the wilderness was not 
at all worth while unless one were sure that ultimately 
ownership with a clear transferable title would be the 
reward of years of labor. 

Yet even a clear title did not make poor land attract- 
ive. Worcester County in Massachusetts had been 
passed over for nearly sixty years because of its uneven 
and intractable soil ; pioneers left portions of it un- 
occupied while they moved on to take up the intervale 
lands in the Connecticut and the Housatonic valleys. 
It was only when the more fertile lands were wholly 
peopled that the later comers were willing to stop 
midway and cultivate farms where the land was more 
difficult to subdue. Ellington (in Connecticut), a well- 
wooded and timbered plain, was passed by for some 
seventy-five years, emigrants preferring the mountain- 
ous lands under the impression that they were more 
fertile.^ Moreover, the lands contigouus to the rivers 

* Such was the case of New Fairfield, the settlement of which was 
delayed ahout twenty years by the dispute between the two colonies over 
the boundary line. See Barber, Hist. Coll. of Conn., 387. In Tolland tlie 
settlers had a long law suit with the heirs of the Indian sachem of whom 
they had purchased their land. Ihid., 540. 

' Stiles, Ancient PTmrfsor, 263. Also Barber, Hist. Coll. of Conn., ^^1. 
Ware, Massachusetts, had a similar history. The tract was granted to a 
military company from Narragansett, as a reward for driving out the 
Indians. The owners placed so little value upon it that they sold it soon 
after to John Reed of Boston for *' two coppers " an acre. See Barber, 
Hist. Coll. of Mass., 343. 



104 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

were chosen because of the transportation facilities they 
offered, — a consideration of importance in a country 
where there are no roads. 

The settlers in the wild lands were becoming more 
and more differentiated from those of the older towns. 
On the frontier men mingled from Connecticut and 
Massachusetts, as has been shown, especially in the 
Berkshire County towns, where they met Dutch settlers 
from New York as well. In many cases it was probably 
a second move for the family, or a third, and certain 
families were growing to be " pioneering families," who 
inherited, as it were, a longing for the open, for the 
free life of an unorganized community ; or else, chafing 
among conservatives who resented change of any sort, 
and therefore seemed intolerant to a radical, desired to 
organize a community where people might do as they 
pleased. Wethersfield had had a great number of such 
splittings off from the old church. It was only natural 
that such characters should impress themselves upon 
a new community, and that the frontier should be more 
radical than the seaboard. That the traditions of church 
and school were not forgotten even in the midst of 
overwhelming vicissitudes is evident from instances on 
record in Maine, where the province helped to pay the 
salary of at least two ministers, and the people of Kit- 
tery received from the provincial treasury £400 to help 
them build a new meeting-house.* But the case was not 
always so hopeful, for the absence of churches and 
schools in some parts of Maine and New Hampshire 
had left its mark upon the people, and had been re- 

* Williamson, Maine, ii, 158, 159. 



FORTY YEARS OF STRIFE WITH THE WILDERNESS 105 

corded with unfavorable comment as early as 1754. 
Some towns which had been rebuilt three times alleoed 

o 

their poverty as an excuse for neglecting to support the 
educational and religious institutions upon which their 
fathers had set such store/ 

While this differentiation was taking place between 
the more populous seaboard and the sparsely settled in- 
terior, it became evident in one interesting instance that 
Eno'land still regfarded the whole of New Eno-land as an 
inexperienced and radical frontier. With the develop- 
ment of industry and commerce, banking projects of 
a simple character had been furthered by individuals in 
the older colonies such as Massachusetts and Rhode 
Island, but had met with opposition from the newer 
communities, whose inhabitants were usually of the 
debtor class or in sympathy with it. The most notable 
banking scheme was launched in 1740 in Massachu- 
setts, where a bank was proposed on land security. 
Scarcely was it organized, when the English Parliament 
ordered its dissolution by applying the "Bubble Act," 
which had had its origin in the disasters of 1720. Thus 
did the English government express its disapproval of 
frontier finance.^ But the floating of paper money, in 
the shape of bills of credit, was undisturbed, perhaps 
because the scarcity of specie in the colonies, even 
for paying direct taxes levied that Indian wars might 

* Belknap, iii, 288-290, shows a sad state of affairs in New Hampshire, 
where poverty was made the excuse for persistent evasion of the school 
laws. 

^ The best account of this Land Bank is by A. M. Davis, Currency and 
Banking in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, in Publications of Amer. 
Econ. Assn., 3d ser., ii, No. 2. 



106 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

be carried on, made some form of credit an absolute 
necessity. 

The close of the period 1713-54 shows France and 
England again face to face, waiting for some overt act 
to precipitate open warfare. The European questions at 
stake in the Seven Years* War do not concern this 
study. The issues in North America were those of ex- 
pansion, of the future character of the frontier. It was 
to her American outposts, their inhabitants, and to pio- 
neer methods of warfare that England looked to save 
the day in the last struggle with her ancient enemy. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 

The same general works mentioned for the previous chapters are again 
available here. Some other local histories have been called into requisi- 
tion, as Rev. Samuel Orcutt's History of Torrington, Connecticut (Albany, 
1878) ; Noah A. Phelps, History of Simsbury, Granhy, and Canton (Hart- 
ford, 1845) ; William Hyde, Address delivered at Ware, Massachusetts 
(Brookfield, 1847) ; and Arthur Latham Perry, Origins of WilUamstown. 
For Vermont, Coolidge and Mansfield duplicate Thompson's Vermont in 
many cases ; but B. H. Hall's History of Eastern Vermont (New York, 
1858) contains much material not available elsewhere. Hiland Hall's 
History of Vermont (Albany, 1868) is a different work entirely. Charles A. 
Hanna, in The Scotch-Irish (2 vols., New York and London, 1902), is the 
authority for the Scotch-Irish settlements in New Hampshire and else- 
where. 

There are several good county histories for New York which take up 
the period. Samuel W. Eager's Outline History of Orange County (New- 
burgh, 1846-47) ; Robert Bolton, Jr., History of the County of Westches- 
ter (2 vols., New York, 1848) ; William J. Blake, History of Putnam 
County, New York (New York, 1849) ; and a most interesting work of 
the capitalist Jay Gould in his early days. The History of Delaware 
County (Roxbury, 1856) — all these are excellent pieces of work. 

For the Dorchester colony in its later history, see Rev. George White, 
Historical Collections of Georgia (3d edition, New York, 1855) ; C. C. 



FOKTY YEARS OF STRIFE WITH THE WILDERNESS 107 

Joues, Jr., History of Georgia (2 vols., Boston, 1883) ; Rev. D. B. Hall, 
The Halls of New England (Albany, 1883) ; and T. P. Hall (compiler). 
Genealogical Notes, relating to the families of Hon. Lyman Hall, of Georgia 
[and others]. 

For economic conditions, reference has already been made to William 
A. Weeden's work. There are a few general works such as Professor 
E. L. Bogart's Economic History of the United States, Miss Katharine 
Coman's Industrial History of the United States, and Professor D. R. 
Dewey's Financial History of the United States; but these take up the 
matter very briefly. Professor G. L. Beer has made the best study of the 
navigation acts in his Commercial Policy of England towards the American 
Colonies in Columbia University Studies, iii. No. 2. Professor Beer's 
newest books, — British Colonial Policy, 1754-1765 (N. Y. 1907), and 
Origins of the British Colonial System, 1578-1660 (N. Y. 1908), are also 
admirable. A. M. Davis has done the best work on currency and banking 
in Massachusetts Bay Colony. 



CHAPTER V 

THE FRONTIER IN WAR AND IN PEACE 
1754-1781 

As early as 1750 it was evident that the treaty o£ 
Aix-la-Chapelle was merely an armed truce, and that 
within a few years there must inevitably ensue a life- 
and-death struggle between England and France for the 
possession of New France, including the Ohio valley, 
and the unknown, unexplored regions stretching west- 
ward to the mountains and the Pacific. To the victors 
in this struggle the colonies would be the prize, and 
hence they were forced to take sides not merely to 
decide under what government they should continue, but 
in some cases actually to struggle for their very exist- 
ence. The Indians were held by the slightest leash, and 
even tried and seasoned frontiersmen were unwilling to 
carve new homes out of the forest until the outcome of 
the struo;"2"le should be known. 

In 1754, two years before the European contest be- 
gan, the representatives of the British government, in 
the persons of General Braddock and the young frontiers- 
man George Washington, began the struggle with the 
French and Indians at Fort DuQuesne. Between that 
year and 1760, when the hardest fighting was over, there 
was but little shifting of the frontier line. In western 
Massachusetts the depopulation of Williamstown and 
Becket was but temporary, but not a new town was 



THE FRONTIER IN WAR AND IN PEACE 109 

planted within the borders of the colony till the actual 
warfare was over. In Connecticut conditions were similar : 
one man lived alone in Barkhamstead from 1749 to 
1759 ; and the single family in Hartland moved back to 
civilization in 1754 after a year of pioneering, but re- 
turned the following year with three f amiHes from Lyme. 
yc> From 1658 until 1762 not a new settlement was planted. 
No extension of the settled area in New Hampshire took 
place till 1758, nor in Maine till 1759. A family which 
had already tried pioneering in Charlestown, New Hamp- 
shire, who had come originally from Shirley, Massachu- 
setts, moved to Putney, Vermont, in 1755, and found 
three families there before them.^ Until 1761 no new 
settlers moved into any other part of Vermont. 

With the fall of Quebec in 1758, the war in America 
was practically over, though the contests in Europe con- 
tinued five years longer. The pent-up population was 
ready to swarm by 1760, and as soon as hostilities ceased, 
the unappropriated lands were taken up. A few Mas- 
sachusetts towns will serve to illustrate the movement. 
Lee ^ drew its pioneers of 1760 from Tolland and New 
Haven, Connecticut ; from Barnstable, Sandwich, Fal- 
mouth, and Great Barrington, in Massachusetts. Hunt- 
ington, whose first settlers called their new home Norwich 
from the Connecticut town they had left, sent back 
twenty years after for a minister from the old home.^ To 

^ Rev. Amos Foster, " Putney," in Vermont Hist. Gaz., v, pt. ii, 219. 
The families after 1761 came from Canterbury, Connecticut, and from 
Rehoboth, Massachusetts. A little later others came from Athol, Man- 
chester, and Oxford, Massachusetts. Ibid., 220, 240, 243, 244. 

' Barber, Hist. Coll. of Mass., 77. In 1770 thirteen families were here. 
Amory Gale, Lee, 4. » J. H. Bisbee, Huntington, 7, 26, 27. 



110 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

Chesterfield there moved sixty families between 1760 
and 1765, twenty-one of whom came from Scituate, the 
others from seven Massachusetts towns/ New Ashford 
had pioneer families from Rhode Island and Connecticut, 
as had Hancock, Hinsdale, and Cheshire.^ Richmond 
contained settlers from Long Island and Connecticut, 
Clarksburg drew its inhabitants from Long Island and 
Rhode Island, while Williamsburg's pioneers were from 
Martha's Vineyard and central Massachusetts. Thus the 
population of the most recently settled towns was made up 
of diverse elements which were seeking new homes in any 
New England territory as yet unoccupied. Besides grant- 
ing lands in the usual way, upon the request of would-be 
proprietors, the colonial government of Massachusetts 
took the initiative on June 2, 1762, by offering for 
sale at public auction nine townships lying near the 
western border of the colony. The township of Adams 
brought into the colonial treasury £3200, Windsor 
£1430, Peru .£1460.^ The three proprietors of Adams 
laid out forty-eight settling lots of one hundred acres each, 
to which they later added twenty lots of the same size, 
and admitted settlers to the number of sixty, on condition 
that they build a meeting-house and settle a minister ac- 
cording to the requirements of the General Court. In 

* Holland, West. Mass., ii, 183. The towns were Cobasset, Dudley, 
Sutton, Charlton, Pembroke, Pelham, and Northampton. 

' Barber, 83, 73, 75. The first settler of Hancock came with his seven 
sons, who all settled about him. All four of these towns are strongly Baptist, 
as were their Rhode Island pioneers. 

' Adams was seven by five miles, as was Windsor ; Peru was six by 
four and one half. This makes Adams bring about seventy cents an acre 
Windsor about thirty-three cents, and Peru about thirty-seven cents. 



THE FRONTIER IN WAR AND IN PEACE 111 

1768 the rest of the land was divided into tracts contain- 
ing two hundred acres each/ Windsor, another of these 
auction townships, was settled by Connecticut and Had- 
ley families ; Peru drew its first family from New Jersey, 
later ones from Connecticut and eastern Massachusetts.^ 
Connecticut settlers had, as has been shown, gone in 
considerable numbers to western Massachusetts. They 
also filled up what little unoccupied land was left 
in their own colony. Barkhamstead, whose settlers came 
from Enfield, Suffield, Simsbury, Hamden, Hartford, and 
East Haddam;^ Hartland, which was a younger Lyme;* 
Colebrook, whose pioneers were Windsor and East Wind- 
sor people — these, with Winchester, provided homes 
for a few. The whole of the colony was thus laid out in 
townships, and the history of settlement within the bor- 
ders of Connecticut was ended, as was that of Rhode 
Island and Massachusetts. But yet there were many fami- 
lies in all these colonies restless and unsatisfied. For such 
adventurous spirits lay the vacant lands beyond the fron- 
tier line of northern New England. During the French 
and Indian War soldiers had passed continually through 
the territory along both sides of the Connecticut River, 
and when peace was restored, they were eager to possess 
the fertile tracts which they had coveted on their marches. 
Governor Wentworth of New Hampshire and his council 
ordered that a survey be made, and that townships six 
miles square be laid out. During 1761 sixty townships 

' Barber, 61, 62. The first settlers were mostly from Litchfield, Wood- 
bury, and Wallingford, Connecticut ; they very soon sold to Quakers from 
Rhode Island, and the population changed in character entirely. 

2 Holland, Western Mass., ii, 615, 616, 543, 544. 

8 Barber, Hist. Coll. of Conn., 460. * Trumbull, Connecticut, ii, 112. 



112 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

were granted on the west side, and eighteen on the east 
side of the river, in each of which there were reserved 
lots for "pubHc purposes," and five hundred acres for 
the governor, the reservation being free of all fees and 
charges. Altogether one hundred and thirty-eight grants 
were made, and the proprietors sought settlers in all the 
colonies. * Rhode Islanders were going to western Mass- 
achusetts and Pennsylvania, others moved to New Hamp- 
shire, where a new Richmond perpetuated the memory 
of the old one of 1669. Marlow was granted in 1761 to 
seventy men, mostly of Lyme, Connecticut, who brought 
twenty-eight families here in ten years. Lebanon is a child 
of Lebanon and Mansfield, Connecticut; Claremont's 
pioneers were from Hebron, Farmington, and other 
Connecticut towns, Hebron also contributing families to 
Gilsum. Plainfield is but Plainfield, Connecticut, trans- 
planted, Lyme but an offshoot of the older Lyme. Fami- 
lies from East Haddam founded Campton, others from 
Hebron and Lebanon began Orford. From North Killing- 
worth six men went in 1765 to Newport and spent the 
winter; the next year their wives and children followed, 
and the permanence of the town was assured. The num- 
ber of Connecticut settlers who began New Hampshire 
towns was not small, and examples might be multiplied. 
Massachusetts also did her part in founding New 
Hampshire towns. To Lancaster, Plymouth, Weare, Corn- 
ish, Croydon, Stoddard, Bradford — to these and other 

^ Belknap, Hist, of New Hampshire, ii, 312, 313. 

2 Edmund "Wheeler, Croydon Celebration, 73-157. Most of the first 
settlers came from Plymouth County or from Sutton. Later ones were 
from Royalston, Boston, Worcester, Brimfield, and Hingham. 



THE FRONTIER IN WAR AND IN PEACE 113 

towns moved many Massachusetts families. To some of 
the new towns went also families from eastern New 
Hampshire/ so that four colonies mingled on the north- 
ern frontier. The growth of New Hampshire was remark- 
able : one hundred towns were planted in fifteen years 
following 1760, all of them by families from Con- 
necticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, or the older 
New Hampshire towns. 

Nor do these one hundred towns represent aU the 
northern emigration, for Maine claimed a share. During 
the early part of the French and Indian War, towns 
along the frontier were harassed by the savages, and 
until the fall of Quebec the whole eastern section re- 
mained a wilderness. Tentative beginnings had been 
made in several towns in 1760, while in 1761 twelve 
townships were granted east of the Penobscot River. 
To these there moved, within the next few years, settlers 
from Haverhill, Andover, Concord (New Hampshire), and 
the western towns of Maine, such as York and George- 
town.^ Other towns were founded under proprietors, as 
Belfast, whose grantees were inhabitants of London- 
derry, New Hampshire. They purchased of the heirs of 
General Waldo (founder of Waldoborough) 15,000acres, 

* To Wolfeborough from Portsmouth, New Durham, Suncook, and 
other towns. See B. F. Parker, Wolfeborough, 105-111, 114. Also to 
Middletown from Lee and Rochester. See Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., 2d. 
ser., iii, 121. The ratable polls in New Hampshire in 1753 were 6392 ; in 
1767, 11,964 ; in 1773, 13,853. See Bouton, Provincial Papers, vii, 723. 
Belknap gives the whole population in 1767 as 52,700 ; in 1775, 82,200. 
See his Hist, of New Hampshire, iii, 234. 

' Williamson, Maine, ii, 544. Coolidge and Mansfield, 151, 165, 310, 
343. Land sold here, before 1784, for thirteen cents an acre; after that, 
for thirty cents. See letter quoted in Williamson, ii, 608, n. 



114 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

■which they divided into fifty-one rights and resold to 
Scotch-Irish families of Londonderry and the surround- 
ing towns. A company laid out Augusta in 1761-62, 
and in five years had disposed of all rights but five to 
people from Boston and the surrounding towns. Indeed, 
Massachusetts supplied most of the settlers to the ninety- 
four Maine towns which were founded between 1759 
and 1776. A few villages will illustrate all. To Vassal- 
borough went Cape Cod families, ten in the eight years 
after 1760; five families from Beverly and Andover 
moved to Bluehill, 1762-65 ; five Haverhill families 
began Bucksport; Concord (Massachusetts) families 
settled four towns, Bloomfield, Canaan, Norridgewock, 
Baldwin; while Cape Cod had three to her credit, — 
Hampden, Manchester, and China, — though some 
families came also from Nantucket. Plymouth County 
sent emigrants to Hebron. Several families often 
banded together to go to the wilderness, as the four 
families who moved from Rowley to Waterford. The 
usual conditions — that thirty families be settled within 
six years — were not often fulfilled; but the emigra- 
tion was certainly a large one. In 1772 there were 
forty-two towns in the Penobscot district alone, and 
2638 families.^ 

1 "Williamson, Maine, ii, 373, gives a census report of 1764 which he 
says is neither very thorough nor very correct. He gives the following 
figures : — White Persons. 

York County 11,145 

Cumberland County. . .8,195 

Lincoln County .4,247 

Total 23,587 

332 negroes. 
23,919 



THE FRONTIER IN WAR AND IN PEACE 115 

Still other new lands were awaiting inhabitants. To 
the people of eastern Massachusetts, Maine had been 
most accessible ; to those in the central part, New Hamp- 
shire had offered an alluring prospect ; but to the people 
of the western counties of the Bay colony, Vermont lands 
were too easily reached to be passed by for tracts to the 
eastward. Up to 1761 the danger of fire and tomahawk 
was too great to be risked ; with that fear set at rest, 
there was no restraint upon those who wanted new homes. 
Even the conflicting claims to the territory which were 
set up by New York and New Hampshire could not 
stem the tide that surged northward, though usually 
the frontiersman was wary about building upon the 
chance of being dispossessed in a few years. New Hamp- 
shire had made large grants on the Vermont side of the 
Connecticut, and the patentees had gone into all parts 
of the other colonies to get settlers for the new lands. 
Seventy-four new towns were planted in the fifteen years 
just preceding 1776, to whose origin every colony in 
New England, save Maine, which had enough vacant 
land within easy reach, contributed many families. Rhode 
Island was represented in Marlborough, Bennington, 
Shaftsbury, Danby, Londonderry, and probably others ; 
Smithfield was the town which sent the most families. 
Weathersfield in Vermont suggests by its name Con- 
necticut origin ; * many of the proprietors were New 
Haven men. Norwich was a town which attracted Pres- 
ton and Mansfield settlers, while Middletown, Suffield, 
and Strafford emigfrants settled in Marlboroujrh with 
many from western Massachusetts towns, and some 

* Thompson, Hist, of Vermont, pt. iii, 184. The spelling differs, however. 



IIG THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

Smithfield (Rhode Island) families. Arlington was the 
home which Connecticut Episcopalians chose j eleven 
families from Newtown arrived in 1764, — almost a whole 
congregation, as was the group of families which joined 
them from New Milford. Nor did the families come 
singly. Hartford's pioneers were from Lebanon, Con- 
necticut J in two years it had more than twelve families 
established. Eight families moved from Salisbury to 
Tinmouth. Vergennes, Thetford, Rupert, Strafford, 
Pittsford — dozens of towns had Connecticut represent- 
atives, side by side with families from most western 
Massachusetts towns, and sometimes from Dutchess 
County and Nine Partners, New York.^ From the very 
names of most towns one may often see their origin, 
— as in Pomf ret, Wallingford, Salisbury, Newbury, and 
Londonderry. 

Bennington will serve as a type of the old methods 
of planting towns, combined with new features. There 
was an organized emigration to Bennington from Hard- 
wick, Massachusetts, in 1761. Captain Samuel Robin- 
son, a Hardwick resident, was returning from the French 
and Lidian War when he lost his way, and in endeavor- 
ing to get home through the wilderness, passed through 
the country about Bennington. He found the land so 
attractive that he determined to make for himself a new 
home, and gathering a company of twenty-two people, 
set off for Vermont. By winter some thirty families from 

' Dutchess County and Nine Partners had had accessions from New 
Jersey, as has been shown ; New Jersey had been settled from Long Is- 
land, and Connecticut and Long Island' from Connecticut. The pioneer- 
ing spirit had evidently not been diminished in the moving. See A. M. 
Caverly, Pittsford, 26-52. 



THE FRONTIER IN WAR AND IN PEACE 117 

Massachusetts towns, and a few others from Connecti- 
cut, had arrived. The Hardwick emigration was dis- 
tinctly a rehgious movement ; the people had gone " to 
gain greater freedom in ecclesiastical affairs." ^ A church 
was organized in 1762 with fifty-seven members. For 
many of the settlers it was a second or a third remove : 
one man had gone from Cambridge to Hardwick, thence 
to Bennington; another had begun life in Concord, but 
had Hved in Hardwick and Amherst ; another had moved 
from Guilford to Roxbury, thence to Bennington; a 
fourth came directly from Charlemont, Massachusetts, 
but had been born in Norwich, Connecticut. There was 
a family from Newark, New Jersey, one from Ports- 
mouth, England, and one from Troy, New York, mingled 
with those from the New England colonies.^ 

A few figures are significant. In 1771 the population 
of Cumberland and Gloucester counties was 4669, — 391:7 
in the former and 722 in the latter ; the population of 
the whole of Vermont was about 7000,^ and this num- 
ber had been very considerably augmented by 1776. 

The course which expansion had taken after 1763 

* L. R. Paige, Hardwick, 56, n. 

2 Jennings, Memorials of a Century, 20-22, 33, 205-317. One of the 
settlers from Hardwick, Massachusetts, on his way to Bennington in 
1761, passed through Charlemont, Massachusetts, as a tavern-bill is pre- 
served by the family showing his expense at that place. Ihid., 23. Hard- 
wick parted with another company in 1775, who went under the leadership 
of Asa Whitcomb to plant Barnard, Vermont ; this was not, however, a 
distinctly religious movement. L. R. Paige, Hardwick, 55, 56. 

8 Thompson, pt. ii, 30. R. S. Taft (in Vermont Hist. Gaz., i, 492) thinks 
that what contributed largely to the rapid settlement of Chittenden 
County just before the Revolution was the fact that there a clear title 
could be obtained, whereas in the southern part, the conflicting claims of 
New York and New Hampshire interfered greatly with any possibility of 



118 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

was directed somewhat by the terms of the English 
proclamation of that year. France had at last been 
driven from the New World, and by the Peace of Paris 
England had come into undisputed possession of all the 
land from Hudson's Bay to the Gulf of Mexico. The 
government of these tracts was provided for * by a pro- 
clamation erecting the territories of Quebec, East Florida, 
West Florida, and Grenada, leaving the whole interior 
of the country bounded by the Great Lakes and Florida, 
the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River, 
to the Indians and the fur-trade, with specific injunc- 
tions that settlement should be kept out. Thus the area 
open to settlement was very definitely restricted. North- 
ern New England had been filling rapidly since 1760, 
and the three southern colonies were entirely divided 
off into townships.^ But there was still land east of the 
limit laid down by the property line of 1764, and by 
the boimdaries defined at Fort Stanwix in 1768. To- 
wards one of these tracts much of Connecticut's surplus 
population turned. The territory of the Delaware and 
Susquehanna Companies in northeastern Pennsylvania 

getting a secure title. Settlers in Windham, Windham County, bought 
land in 1773 for three or four English shillings an acre ; this was in 
the disputed tracts. See Mrs. L. B. Wood, " Windham," in Vermont 
Hist. Gaz., V, pt. iii, 5. 

^ The document is given in its entirety in Macdonald, Select Charters, 
267-272. 

2 There is no room in this study for the investigation of the New Eng- 
land migrations to Canada following the French and Indian War. Fisher- 
men from Cape Cod and Nantucket took advantage of the proclamation 
of the Governor of Nova Scotia in 1756, and as early as 1757 the move- 
ment to Cape Sable began. In 1761-62 a number of families founded 
Barrington. See The Doane Family , 75, 76. 



THE FRONTIER IN WAR AND IN PEACE 119 

was the great district to ■which hundreds of families now 
moved. The Delaware Company was a Connecticut or- 
ganization which purchased lands of the Indians on the 
Delaware River, with the sanction of Connecticut, the 
claimant of the lands under her charter. They invited 
settlers to that tract, where the proprietors announced 
in October, 1760, that they had erected three town- 
ships, each extending ten miles along the Delaware and 
eight miles inland. They had also laid out a large town 
of eighty lots in the middle township, and had built 
thirty cabins, three loghouses, a grist-mill, and a saw- 
mill. Twenty men were reported as being on their land, 
and one hundred families were expected in the spring. 
The lands were parceled out in two-hundred-acre lots, 
twelve of which were to be cleared and improved and a 
house built on each within three years, on pain of for- 
feiture.* Two years later there were sixteen families 
settled on the river, their farms spreading over seven 
miles. Forty men were in the settlement, living in log- 
houses, and claiming their lands under title from Con- 
necticut.^ 

The Susquehanna Company, also a Connecticut as- 
sociation, was formed by eight hundred and fifty Con- 
necticut men who in 1755 bought the lands claimed by 
the Six Nations in northern Pennsylvania, in accordance 

» Report of the Sheriff and Justices of Northampton County (to the Gov- 
ernor of Pennsylvania), October 15, 1760. See Pennsylvania Colonial 
Records, viii, 565. Also Miner, Hist, of Wyoming, 70. 

^ Memorandum of John Williamson, Pa. Archives, iv, 83, 84. The names 
given are Thomas, Tracey, Jones, Kimball, Cash, Parks, Tyler, and Cum- 
mins, — all of them Connecticut or Massachusetts names. This was called 
the Cushetuuck settlement, and is probably the later Cochectou in Wayne 
County. 



120 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

with colonial practice. The tract was twenty miles in 
extent from north to south, and covered two degrees of 
longitude from a line just west of the Susquehanna 
River/ In 1762 the Company sent two hundred per- 
sons into the beautiful Wyoming Valley, whose intervale 
lands and luxuriant woods offered richest prospects for 
new homes.^ The Company had made a regulation re- 
quiring that the emigrants should support a minister, 
and one went with the band in 1762. Many of these 
first settlers went back to Connecticut for the winter, 
returning in the spring of 1763 to the Wyoming Valley 
with their families.' In October the Indians fell upon 
the settlement ; many were massacred, among them their 
minister, and the rest fell back to Connecticut. For six 
years the valley lay desolate ; then a second company, 
taking with them a minister, was sent out. Feeling as- 
sured that this time the enterprise would be successful, 
the Company apportioned in each township three shares 
of land, each containing about three hundred acres, — 
one for schools, one for the erection of a church and 
parsonage, and one for the support of a pastor. When 
the forty persons who set out from Connecticut arrived, 
they found that Pennsylvania had determined to make 
good her claim to the Susquehanna Company's lands, 
and had also sent settlers into the territory. All the set- 
tlers stayed, however, and by April, 1769, there were 

1 Conn. Col. Rec, x, 378. The assembly acquiesced in the proposed 
colony to be planted by the Susquehanna Company if His Majesty ap- 
proved. 

2 Sherman Day, Hist. Col. of Pa., 434. 

* Stewart Pearce, Annals of Luzerne County, 277. This settlement was 
just below Wilkesbarre. 



THE FRONTIER IN WAR AND IN PEACE 121 

two hundred and seventy or eighty able-bodied men 
here. In September the Pennsylvanians drove out the 
Connecticut men, and forced them again to their old 
homes/ Not daunted by their expulsion from their 
lands, they returned in small squads in 1770, only to 
be agfain driven out in the fall. Two families seem to 
have settled in Plymouth, and were joined by others in 
1771-72.^ From that time on, settlers came in increas- 
ing numbers. Wilkesbarre (its name indicative of colo- 
nial sympathy with English parliamentary affairs) was 
a typical New England town. Surveyed in 1770, it had 
two hundred acres divided into eight squares of twenty- 
five acres each, these into six lots, each of which con- 
tained (after the streets were taken off ) nearly four 
acres. A central square was laid off for the town build- 
ings, mills and ferries were provided, and " with true 
pilgrim zeal, attention was immediately turned to the 
subject of a gospel ministry, and the establishment of 
schools." In 1772 the first town-meeting was held. It 
is evident that such a village is merely a transplanted 
Connecticut town, in settlers, traditions, and institutions. 
A tax of threepence in the pound was levied in 1773 
for the support of a free school in each township of the 
tract, and the following year was appointed the first 

> Miner, Hist, of Wyoming, 70, 104, 105, 107-113. The five townships 
settled at this time were Wilkesbarre, Hanover, Kingston, Plymouth, and 
Pittston. Obadiah Gore and his seven sons went from Norwich with the 
first company in 1769. Very few settlers brought their families. 

3 H. B. Wright, Hist. Sketches of Plymouth, 38, 361, 371, 373. There 
were about eighty men here in 1777 who were able to bear arms. Ibid., 
66. Plymouth, Pennsylvania, was named from Plymouth, Connecticut, 
which had been named for Plymouth, Massachusetts, from which its first 
settlers came. Pearce, Annals of Luzerne County, 215. 



122 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

school committee, with power to erect schoolhouses and 
employ teachers/ 

At a meeting in Hartford on June 2, 1773, the Sus- 
quehanna Company drew up a set of articles which was 
accepted by the settlers who went into Pennsylvania.^ 
The preamble of the articles set forth that since the 
lands into which the Connecticut people were about to 
move were claimed by both Pennsylvania and Con- 
necticut, and advices had not been received from Great 
Britain as to which had the real title, therefore no civil 
authority existed in said settlement, and all sorts of dis- 
orders were liable to arise. The first article professed 
allegiance to the king ; the second bound the signers to 
obey the laws of Connecticut as faithfully as if they 
actually resided within the borders of that colony. By 
the third article the settlers in each town promised to 
choose immediately after their arrival three directors to 
take upon themselves the regulation of town affairs, 
subject to the general orders of the Susquehanna Com- 
pany, and one person was to be chosen as constable, 
with the same powers that such an officer would have 
in Connecticut. These directors were to meet once a 
month or oftener for the transaction of business and 
to impose fines and punishments on offenders as might 
be needed. The directors of aU the towns were ordered 
to meet once in three months for conference, and to act 
as a sort of court of appeal from the decisions of the 

* Judea, Charleston, and Muncy, three towns planted on the west bank 
of the Susquehanna, were all broken up by the Pennsylvania government 
in 1775. 

* Miner, Hist of Wyoming, 146-150. 



THE FRONTIER IN WAR AND IN PEACE 123 

directors of any one town ; and there was to be no ap- 
peal from these directors in general conference to the Sus- 
quehanna Company save in land disputes. The directors at 
this meeting were also to elect a sheriff for the whole set- 
tlement, to whom the inhabitants were to submit as to the 
high sheriff in a Connecticut county. For serious crimes 
the offender was to be banished and his goods confiscated 
by the town wherein the offense was committed. The 
tenth and eleventh articles provided for the election of 
constables and directors by male settlers twenty-one 
years of age and one proprietor in each town ; for the 
preparation by the directors of lists of ratable polls and 
estates, and for general taxation according to such 
schedules. Finally these twelve articles are declared 
binding " until the colony of Connecticut shall annex 
us to one of the counties of this colony, or make us a 
distinct county, or we obtain from the said colony, or 
from his Gracious Majesty, King George the Third, 
whose true and loyal subjects we are, powers of govern- 
ment in some more permanent method." All settlers 
were required to sign these articles as a warrant of 
their acceptance of them. This agreement is most sig- 
nificant as an instance of the removal of institutions 
hand in hand with the removal of the people who were 
to live under them ; and of the fact that the new colony 
was regarded as but an extension of the older one, later 
to be incorporated under its general government. This 
incorporation was accomplished by an act of January, 
1774, by which the General Assembly of Connecticut 
erected all the territory within her charter limits, from 
the Delaware River to a line fifteen miles west of the 



124 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

Susquehanna, into a town, with all the powers of a cor- 
porate town in Connecticut. It was to be called West- 
moreland, and be attached to Litchfield County. Two 
justices of the peace were commissioned and directed 
to call a town-meeting for the purpose of electing local 
ofiicers. The whole town, which was about seventy 
miles square, was redivided into townships five or six 
miles square, each of which was to make rules and by- 
laws for itself by which its internal affairs should be 
regulated. The Connecticut programme was carried out 
exactly as it was planned : Westmoreland, which now 
contained 1922 inhabitants, held its first town-meeting, 
and subdivided the town into eight districts shortly 
after.* That year seven other town-meetings were held, 
and the organization was completed. Selectmen, a trea- 
surer, constables, a surveyor of highways, fence viewers, 
grand jurors, — all these and the rest of the ofiicers of 
a Connecticut town were elected ; and in April four 
deputies were chosen to go to the General Assembly at 
Hartford, regardless of the distance and the intervening 
colonies." Westmoreland was in the minds of the Con- 

' Miner, Hist, of Wyoming, 152-156. The eight sub-townships were 
Wilkesbarre, Hanover, Plymouth, Kingston, Pittston, the North district 
(containing Exeter and Providence), the Lackaway district (with three 
settlements), and the East district (comprising Cushetunck, and all the 
settlements on the Delaware). 

^ Miner, Hist, of Wyoming, 156-159. The names of some of the offi- 
cers chosen are Connecticut ones, — Haskel, Tracey, Gaylord, Sills, Butler, 
and Chapman. The names of the Westmoreland towns are interesting 
to study : Exeter, Kingston, Providence, and Newport suggest Rhode 
Island pioneers. Lebanon, Colchester, Plainfield, Lyme, Kent, Norwich, 
Volimtown, and a dozen more Connecticut towns had sent settlers into 
Westmoreland before 1773. See Pearce, Annals of Luzerne County, 184- 
218 ; aud Miner, Hist, of Wyoming, App., 12-61. 



THE FRONTIER IN WAR AND IN PEACE 125 

necticut people quite as much a part of the old colony 
as if it had lain on her border : it was but an extension 
of her lands to take it in.* 

The Lackaway settlement deserves a word. Here came 
Connecticut settlers in 1774, to settle the townships of 
Lackaway and Bozrah. A fort was erected at once, with 
a blockhouse inside it ; then a civil, military, and ec- 
clesiastical form of government was chosen. A justice 
of the peace, who had a commission supposedly from 
Connecticut, was selected first ; then a constable and a 
tithing-man. After four years the settlement was broken 
up, and the settlers fled either to Orange County, New 
York, to Connecticut, or to the Delaware. After the 
Revolution, however, the original settlers returned and 
again took up their old homes.^ 

An enterprise allied with the Susquehanna Company's 
project was that of the so-called Phineas Lyman colony. 
Phineas Lyman of Suffield, Connecticut, had been a 
member of the Susquehanna Company when in 1755 

* See map opposite. 

' Miner, Hist, of Wyoming, 466-475. Their descendants are said to have 
retained to this day the peculiar features of person and character which 
distinguished the first settlers. Ibid., 476. Pennsylvania local history, ex- 
cept where the Germans are concerned, has had hut slight attention. One 
cannot help feeling that if more work were done, the extent of the Con- 
necticut settlement would be found to be much greater than this investi- 
gation shows. A glance at the map reveals a Canaan, a Lebanon, a Berlin, 
a Preston, a New Milford, a Warren, a Windham, a Litchfield, a Gran- 
ville, a Shrewsbury, a Union, a Brookfield, a Farmington, a Westfield, — 
every one the name of a Connecticut to\vn ; to say nothing of a Salem, a 
Smithfield, a Lenox, a Canton, — all of which immediately suggest either 
Rhode Island or Massachusetts. The coincidences are too nximerous to be 
accidental ; yet data are lacking from which one can prove the New Eng- 
land origin of these towns and others. 



126 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

that body had petitioned the General Assembly of Con- 
necticut for a grant of land in northeastern Pennsyl- 
vania. Lyman had served in the French and Indian 
War, and about 1763 went to England to solicit recog- 
nition and reward for the services he with his fellow 
officers and soldiers had rendered. In the name of a 
company called the " Military Adventurers " he peti- 
tioned for a grant of land in Mississippi on the Yazoo 
River. It is not certain that he actually obtained a grant, 
but he evidently thought the promises made him were 
sufficiently encouraging to warrant him in returning to 
America and setting his colonization schemes on foot.* 
Rufus Putnam, surveyor for the new colony and later 
prominently connected with a great emigration to south- 
ern Ohio, in his account of the exploration made in 1773 
by a committee acting for the company, says their re- 
port as to the character of the soil and climate was so 
favorable that in the fall of that year several hundred 
families from Connecticut and Massachusetts departed 
for Mississippi. During 1773-74 more than four hun- 
dred families made the journey, some going by sea, 
others by flatboats down the Ohio, and still others 
through Tennessee. Nearly every town up and down 
the Connecticut River furnished families for the enter- 
prise, and the passenger lists given by Phelps in his 
memoir are in the nature of a directory of well-known 
Connecticut and Massachusetts names; — for instance, 

^ Justin Winsor ( Westward Movement, 28, 42) says that General Ly- 
man had a plan, which he laid before Lord Shelburne, for establishing colo- 
nies all along the Mississippi River from West Florida to St. Anthony's 
Falls. 



90 Longitude Weat 85 from Greenwich PQ 




New England 
Settlement _ 

in the South. 

1781 



THE FRONTIER IN WAR AND IN PEACE 127 

Comstock, Sheldon, Wolcott, Weed, Crane, Bowen, 
Knapp, Phelps, Bradley, Case, Hotchkiss, and Ellsworth. 
Suffield, Windsor, Hartford, Springfield, Wethersfield, 
Middletown, Northampton, and many other towns were 
represented. The colony moved in the traditional man- 
ner, with a minister at their head. Between the time of 
their departure from New England and their arrival in 
the Gulf of Mexico, an order from the king in council 
was received by the governor of West Florida, in whose 
jurisdiction they intended to live, forbidding the grant 
of more land, either by family right or by purchase, 
until further orders. As a consequence, the emigrants 
were dismayed to find upon their arrival that they could 
occupy land only as " squatters," with every chance of 
being dispossessed later. They finally determined to carry 
out their project, and seventeen miles up the Big Black 
River, above the old French town of Natchez, the site 
for a town was selected.^ Illness overtook many, among 
them General Lyman himself, and the outbreak of the 
Revolution put an end to further additions to the 
colony. There are, however, many families of New 
England origin in and about Natchez to-day.^ 

Still another emigration to the south belongs to the 
years just preceding the Revolution. About 1760 the 
settlement of Guilford County, North Carolina, was be- 

* See map opposite. 

2 S. P. Hildreth, Pioneer Settlers of Ohio, 53, says : " In the year 1802, 
the survivors of that company [the Military Adventurers] about one hun- 
dred in number, reorganized themselves, and petitioned Congress for a 
confirmation of their old grant, but it does not appear that anything was 
done for them ; and thus ended this famous land adventure, which at the 
time caused a good deal of excitement in New England." 



128 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

gun ^ in the southern and western parts by Quakers from 
Pennsylvania and from Nantucket Island. The family 
of William Starbuck left Nantucket in 1771 ; several 
families, among them at least one named Coffin, settled 
in New Garden in 1773, and Elihu Swain's family came 
in 1776.^ At that time there was no slavery in the west- 
ern counties of North Carolina ; as the institution began 
to spread inland, the Quakers, who hated it, moved 
gradually to the west, — to Jefferson, Blount, Greene, and 
Sevier counties, on the eastern border of Tennessee; 
and later to Ohio and to Indiana.^ 

Such was the history of the frontier line up to the 
time when the Revolutionary War called forth many an 
able-bodied young man who in the time of peace would 
have set off for the wilderness to make a clearinsf and 
build a log-cabin. Ethan Allen of Vermont and his 
" Green Mountain boys " formed but one of the many 
bands of backwoodsmen who enlisted on the side of 
the colonies in what was essentially a frontier struggle. 
For England and the English Parliament were still of 
the opinion that a conservative administration of the 

* It then included the present counties of Randolph and Rockingham. 
See Wheeler, North Carolina, ii (bound with i), 170, 

^ Some of the Quaker branch of the Doaue family, originally from 
Massachusetts, but at this time living in Pennsylvania, moved to Cane 
Creek, Chatham County, North Carolina, in 1753. See The Doane Fam- 
ily, 123, 124, 223, 224, 

^ The literature of this movement is to be found largely in the best 
genealogies of the families concerned in it. See Levi Coffin, Reminiscences 
(Cincinnati, 1876), in the Howe Collection, Indianapolis (Indiana) Public 
Library. See, also. The Doane Family, and Tucker's History of Randolph 
County, Indiana, where sketches of the early settlers are given. See map 
on page 199. 



THE FRONTIER IN WAR AND IN PEACE 129 

whole kingdom (including such outlying portions as 
those in North America) could be best carried out from 
London by means of virtual representation. More than 
two centuries of local government by their own dele- 
gates had made the acceptance of such a policy impos- 
sible to the colonies ; and when with this grievance were 
combined others of an undeniably frontier character, — 
economic as well as social, — the inevitable result was a 
resort to arms. As in the French and Indian wars of 
the preceding century, so again in the Revolution, it 
was the outlying districts which felt the hard fortunes 
of war. In Vermont the people of the village of Panton 
were either made prisoners, or had to return to their 
former homes in Cornwall or the Nine Partners tract 
on the Hudson River. Other towns — Whiting, Middle- 
bury, Monkton, Brandon, and their neighbors in the 
north and west — were abandoned, or so threatened with 
misfortunes that no new settlers came in. On the other 
hand, settlement did not wholly cease even amid the 
uncertainties of war. Four new towns in Vermont were 
actually begun in 1776 ; five in 1777-78 ; and six in 
1779.^ A company was formed in 1778 at Hanover, 
New Hampshire, to purchase the township of Randolph, 
and secured settlers from Vermont, New Hampshire, 
Massachusetts, and Connecticut towns. Another com- 

* Tunbridge was begun by New Hampshire men who did not bring 
their families for several months ; Peacham had settlers from Haverhill, 
HoUis, and Concord, New Hampshire ; Andover was a new home for En- 
field emigrants ; and Colchester harbored New London and Woodbury 
settlers, who departed between 1776 and 1783, but returned in the latter 
year and renewed the town. Three families moved from Hardwick to 
Somerset in 1777, and eighteen farms in Brookline were laid off between 



130 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

pany, also from Hanover, in the same year petitioned 
for and received a grant of Bethel. Evidently there 
were able-bodied men who had managed to escape the 
horrors of warfare and who kept on in their ordinary 
walks of life, bettering their condition rather than suf- 
fering from the hard times. All the colonies suffered, 
however. Several Maine towns were abandoned, and 
many were retarded by the war. Belfast was a waste 
from 1779 tHl 1785; Brewer, from 1779 to 1784; 
Hampden, from 1779 to 1783. Yet here, as in Ver- 
mont, settlement went on, — three towns were planted 
in 1776, three in 1777, four in 1779. In New Hamp- 
shire four new towns were begun. 

Upon the Wyoming Valley settlements in Pennsyl- 
vania fell the most terrible blow of all, — the massacre 
of 1778, laying waste the beautiful lands which had 
been settled in 1773, and which the labor of the pio- 
neers had rendered even more productive than they were 
by nature. Those who escaped fled in every direction, 
— to New York State, to Connecticut, to southern 
Pennsylvania, — leaving only a few families in the 
whole Westmoreland tract. Slowly, in 1779-80, the 
survivors crept back to rebuild their houses and to retill 
the soil. Sullivan's campaign, which was undertaken as 
a punishment for the Indians, made his soldiers ac- 
quainted with the region, and after 1780 many who be- 
gan homes here under the Connecticut title were joined 

1777 and 1780, the first settler paying twenty cents an acre for his tract. 
Hollis Town in Vermont Hist. Gaz., v, pt. ii, 530 (article on Somerset), 
says the first settler paid about $640 for 670 acres, but this may have 
been in depreciated currency. The statement quoted is C. P. Stickney's 
in " Brookline," Vermont Hist. Gaz., v, pt. ii, 377. 



THE FRONTIER IN WAR AND IN PEACE 131 

by settlers from New York, some of whom were only 
" squatters." The roads which were opened up hastened 
the tide of incoming migration from New England, as 
well as from Bedford, Luzerne, and other Pennsylvania 
counties. 

By 1780 the tide, which had only ebbed during the 
preceding four years, flowed out again to the north as 
well as to the west. Nine new Maine towns begun in 
1780, two the next year, show the tendency. Only three 
New Hampshire towns were planted in 1780-81; but 
twelve Vermont villages in 1780, four in 1781, — these 
mark the turning of the tide. The coming of peace merely 
accelerated the flow which actual warfare had but tem- 
porarily and partially checked. A new era of prosper- 
ity seemed just dawning, and with the removal of such 
restraints as the English acts of 1763 and 1774 had im- 
posed, to say nothing of the overlapping titles of the in- 
accurate colonial charters, there came a veritable rush of 
pioneering to the north and (a still more important phase) 
to the Far West. Beyond the Alleghanies such advent- 
urers as Daniel Boone* had led the march before the 
Revolution ; now the more conservative New Englanders 
followed in their wake. 

A few phases of the aftermath of the Revolution are 
an interesting study. With the hard life incident to fron- 
tier conditions, there had grown up in some parts of New 
England a carelessness concerning some institutions 

^ Ex-president Theodore Roosevelt, in his studies of pioneering, The 
Winning of the West (4 vols.), has taken up the pre-Revolutionary move- 
ment in a most interesting way. Justin Winsor, in The Westward Move- 
ment, covers somewhat the same ground. 



132 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

•which were traditionally very dear to the descendant o£ 
the Puritans. New Hampshire, for example, had become 
notoriously remiss concerning the enforcement of her 
laws for education. The old laws had been those o£ 
Massachusetts, and made the requirement that every 
town of one hundred families support a grammar school. 
When the towns were few, care was taken to fulfill the 
requirement; but some towns stood out conspicuously as 
being uniformly negligent in the matter of education. 
In 1722 some frontier towns petitioned to be relieved 
from supporting a grammar school during the war. Dur- 
ing the Revolution, not only those, but many large and 
prosperous towns, were for a longtime without any schools 
whatever, and the result is said to have been disastrous 
ahke to education and to moral standards.^ In 1781 
Phillips Exeter Academy was founded, very largely be- 
cause of the woeful neglect of education in New Hamp- 
shire. Its effect was to stimulate education, and by its 
success to induce the foundation of others, like those at 
New Ipswich, Amherst, Atkinson, and Concord. ^ But a 

* Belknap, Hist, of New Hampshire, iii, 289, 290. 

2 Ibid., 290-293. Connecticut men also began to establish academies, not 
because education was neglected, but rather to stimulate it, especially in 
the matter of raising the standard of instruction. Hitherto, while public 
schools had been encouraged, any attempt to open a school which would 
not be under colonial inspection was decidedly frowned down. Toward the 
end of its pre-Revolutionary history, however, private academies began to 
spring up ; the academy at Lebanon, established in 1743 by Governor 
Trumbull, was kept by a Harvard graduate, Nathaniel Tisdale, for more 
than thirty years. Under an act of incorporation from the General Court, 
twelve proprietors opened the "Union School of New London" in 1774, 
to fit young men for college. Nathan Hale was its principal when the war 
broke out, and from his schoolroom he went to give his life for the patriot 
cause. See B. C. Steiner, Hist, of Education in Connecticut, 31, 32, 34. 



THE FRONTIER IN WAR AND IN PEACE 133 

sign which was even more hopeful for the future devel- 
opment of New Hampshire on the educational side was 
the founding of Dartmouth College. It was but fitting 
that in a colony where so great a number of the inhabit- 
ants were originally from Connecticut, Yale College 
should contribute a large share to the founding and the 
history of a new institution which was bound to be more 
or less like that at New Haven. The founder of Dart- 
mouth, Rev. Eleazar Wheelock, was a Windham (Con- 
necticut) boy, who was also a Yale graduate.^ As early as 
1763 Wheelock had besought General Phineas Lyman to 
include a tract for a college in the Natchez grant, but in 
1770, after a varied history, the college was established 
at Hanover, New Hampshire, where fifty-five of the 
sixty-eight shares in the town had been assigned to set- 
tlers from Windham, Connecticut. In its early years 
Dartmouth College graduates were often Connecticut 
youths; in 1772 both graduates came from that col- 
ony; in 1773 five of the six in the class; in 1774, two 
in eight; in 1775, eight in eleven; in 1779, eleven in 
seventeen; in 1785, nine in nineteen. "In all, of the 284 
graduates up to 1790, 121 came from Connecticut, and 
22 from the town of Lebanon alone, where Wheelock 
had formerly preached. " But the majority of the stu- 
dents were from New Hampshire, and into the history 
of that state the traditions and ideals of Dartmouth are 
woven. 

The years just preceding the Revolution were fruit- 
ful ones in developing a spirit of liberty in all the 
colonies, but most radically upon the frontier, where 

* Frederick Chase, Hist, of Dartmouth College^ 1. 



134 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

the settlers were unhampered by conventional views. 
Troubles arose in new towns o£ New Hampshire, Ver- 
mont, and Massachusetts between proprietors and 
settlers, the latter complaining that the former were 
absentees, and, not knowing local conditions, had re- 
fused to help pay for improvements such as roads and 
bridges. The inhabitants of Gilmanton in 1770 peti- 
tioned the General Court relative to a road, complain- 
ing that the proprietors had not aided in making it/ 
Those of New Chester asked leave to tax non-resident 
proprietors for the repairing of a road,^ as did Hills- 
borough, Lyman, and Warren.^ The grantees of Maid- 
stone, Vermont, were all Connecticut men, not one of 
whom ever became an inhabitant of the town ; com- 
plaints were frequent, especially concerning the neces- 
sity of going to Connecticut or New York if a prospect- 
ive settler wanted to buy land. Finally, the matter was 
adjusted by holding proprietary meetings by proxy in 
Maidstone after 1779, by the allotment of lands a few 
years later, and by the appointment of agents resident 
in Maidstone who were competent to transact business 
for the absentee landlords.* 

The trouble at Westminster, Massachusetts, deserves 
notice at length.^ Here some of the proprietors were 
also settlers, but the majority were non-resident, and 
refused either to make the improvements which the 

* Hammond, Toum Papers, xii, 3, 4. 

2 Ihid., 200. The town is now called Hill. 
» Ibid., 206, 499 ; xiii, 625. 

* Vermont Hist. Gaz., i, 1026. 

* W. S. Heywood, " Westminster," in Hist, o/ Worcester Co., ii, 1148, 
1149. 



THE FRONTIER IN WAR AND IN PEACE 135 

settlers demanded, or to induce outsiders to take up 
homes on their land. For ten years the struggle was 
waged, with the victories on the side of the non-resid- 
ents, who held their meetings in Cambridge or nearby 
towns, where the residents of Westminster could not 
go, but where the non-residents were at home. Many 
proposals which seemed to the settlers essential to their 
comfort and prosperity were voted down at Cambridge ; 
and any attempt to hold meetings at Westminster was 
as promptly checked. Finally, the last resort was 
reached, and an appeal for redress was made to the 
legislature by the resident proprietors. The petition 
was granted, and meetings were ordered to be held in 
the township after 1749. Thereafter the residents were 
in the majority, as the non-residents could not go to 
Westminster for the meetings. Most of the officers of 
the proprietary organization were now elected from the 
inhabitants of the town, and improvements were pushed 
rapidly, especially the making of roads. From 130 in 
1750, the population increased to 350 in 1760. But as 
soon as the population had grown to that number, the 
desire to be altogether free of non-resident proprietors 
and to be a corporate town led to the drawing up of 
a petition signed by thirty-two men, asking the General 
Court for incorporation. The act was passed on October 
20, 1759, and the strife between proprietors and settlers 
was at an end. 

A similar struggle, this time between a state and 
a district which aspired to statehood, came between 
New York and Vermont. Originally claimed by all 
three of her neighbors, — New York, New Hampshire, 



136 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

and Massachusetts, — the history of Vermont had been 
one o£ conflicting titles and an uncertain future. When, 
in July, 1777, it became necessary to set up some form 
of government, Vermont aspired to independent state- 
hood, and made her grievances known along with her 
determination to be free of her previous restrictions. 
Her declaration of independence (for so it may be 
called) is strongly suggestive of the national document 
of 1776, which was probably a powerful incentive to 
Vermont to assert her freedom/ 

Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, 
North Carolina, Mississippi, — all these states had 
afforded homes to emigrants from their neighbor states, 
and their growth in the thirty years ending in 1781 
was little short of marvelous.^ Although the history of 
settlement since 1754 had been one of alternate flow and 
ebb of the tide of population, the period had upon the 
whole been one of expansion. People, churches, town- 
meetings, schools, had traveled in company, giving to 
new towns a lasting resemblance to the old ones along 
the coast. Yet differences were becoming more and 
more apparent ; Vermont owed much of its increase of 
population to New York, whose emigrants were unlike 
the Connecticut frontiersmen whose log cabins stood 
next to their own. Although the household from Nine 
Partners had in its family history the names of an- 
cestors who had lived in Connecticut, Long Island, and 
New Jersey, and traditions of New England still sur- 

* A good summary of this document is given by Professor Max Farrand 
in an article in the Yale Review, May, 1908, entitled " The West and tho 
Principles of the Revolution." 

* See map opposite. 



THE FRONTIER IN WAR AND IN PEACE 137 

vived many transplantings, nevertheless, the generations 
of frontier life in four different colonies must have left 
their impress and given the Vermont youth an outlook 
not exactly like that of the lad from Connecticut who 
had always lived under the shadow of the old colony 
church and school. It was on this common ground that 
the diverse elements could meet, — they could all work 
together to form a new state upon the lines which 
conservatism and radicalism combined should dic- 
tate ; and altogether they could move on again to join 
other workers in the wilderness stretching out into the 
west. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 

The sources of Vermont history have been enumerated for the most 
part in preceding notes. A few local histories ought, however, to be enu- 
merated especially : A. M. Caverly, History of . . . Pittsford (Rutland, 
1872) ; H. S. Dana, History of Woodstock (Boston and New York, 1889); 
Isaac Jennings, Memorials of a Century (the early history of Bennington) ; 
Rev. Silas McKeen, History of Bradford (Montpelier, 1875) ; and Samuel 
Swift, History of . . . Middlebury (Middlebury, 1859.) 

The story of New England in Pennsylvania will be found in Sherman 
Day's Historical Collections . . . of Pennsylvania, which is on the plan of 
Barber's work for Massachusetts and Connecticut, but is not so good. 
Charles Miner's History of Wyoming (Philadelphia, 1845), though not 
well organized, is the standard for the territory it covers. W. H. Egle, 
Illustrated History of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (Harrisburg, 
1876), has good material on local history. The Pennsylvania Archives 
(First Series, 12 vols., Philadelphia, 1852-1856) contains documents which 
can be well supplemented from the Connecticut Colonial Records and from 
the Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania (cited usually as 
Colonial Records), in 16 vols., with an index volume (Philadelphia and 
Harrisburg, 1851-60). Stewart Pearce's Annals of Luzerne County and 
H. B. Wright's Historical Sketches of Plymouth, Luzerne County, con- 
tain material not found elsewhere. On the whole, the historians of Penn- 



138 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

sylvania have been more interested in the story of Germans, Quakers, 
and Scotch-Irish than in that of the Puritans. 

For the Lyman colony the following are the chief sources of informa- 
tion : Pennsylvania Archives, ii, 303, for Lyman's connection with the 
Susquehanna Company ; Dr. S. P. Hildreth, Biographical and Historical 
Memoirs of the Early Pioneer Settlers of Ohio, gives Rufus Putnam's 
graphic account of the colony ; Dr, Lyman Coleman, Genealogy of the 
Lyman Family (Albany, 1872) ; Timothy Dwight, Travels in New Eng- 
land and New York (4 vols., New Haven, 1821-22), in his first volume 
gives his account of Lyman's scheme ; and Anthony Haswell's edition of 
the Memoirs and Adventures of Captain Matthew Phelps (Bennington, 
Vermont, 1802) is by a member of the ill-fated expedition. 

The somewhat meagre material on the emigration from Nantucket to 
North Carolina has been indicated in a footnote. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE BEGINNING OF THE GREAT MIGRATIONS FROM 

NEW ENGLAND TOWARD THE WEST 

1781-1812 

It was evident by 1782 that the war between England 
and her American colonies was, to all practical intents, 
a victory for the latter, and that the time intervening 
between the defeat of Cornwallis and the making of a 
treaty of peace would be employed only in arranging 
details as to the J&nal settlement of territorial claims. 
That the new nation just forming as the United States 
of America would extend to the Mississippi River was 
not a foregone conclusion, yet there seemed to be no 
reason why emigrants should be restrained any longer 
from settling on the lands just ceded to the general 
government as the price of a constitution. Expansion 
had not ceased during the struggle between the armies 
of the mother country and the colonies ; new towns had 
been planted farther north each year, though settlements 
on the very edge of civilization had been temporarily 
depopulated; but the movement away from the more 
densely peopled states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, 
and Rhodfe Island was greatly accelerated by the cessa- 
tion of hostilities and the enforced peace which drove 
the Indians back beyond the borders of cultivated land. 
In all directions the stream of emigration from the 
settled portions of New England poured forth in 1782, 



140 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

— to the north, the northeast, to the west, all at the 
same time, from the same sources, and for the same 
reasons. It was natural that the first expansion should 
follow rather closely the movement of the old, and one 
finds new towns first planted beyond the ones last settled, 
in the states just north of Massachusetts/ There was little 
unoccupied land in New Hampshire, and that little gave 
but small promise of future fertility ; yet all the most 
rugged and mountainous tracts were settled slowly. 
Bethlehem, for example, was uninhabited in May, 1798, 
when the petition for a grant was signed; in November 
of the same year the request for the incorporation gave 
the number of settlers as forty. ^ Whitefield, in Coos 
County, though granted in 1774, was not settled for 
twenty-seven years, but was incorporated three years 
after it was settled.^ Over Pittsburgh in the same county 
the British government exercised jurisdiction till the 
Webster- Ashburton treaty adjusted the boundary ; fifty- 
five people settled here in 1810, each claiming two 
hundred acres of land, some of it consisting of rich inter- 
vales. Cambridge and Dumraer, granted in 1773, were 
for fifty years quite unoccupied by reason of the poor 
soil, the former having in 1850 but thirty-five inhabit- 
ants. The population of the whole state was, in 1790, 
141,885; in 1810, 234,460." 

In Maine the population increased from 96,540 in 

* Florida was the only new town settled in Massachusetts ; — Erving, 
Monroe, and Webster were but extensions of older ones. See Holland, 
West. Mass., ii, 362, 393, 489, See map opposite. 

^ Hammond, Town Papers, xi, 190-192. 
3 Ibid., xiii, 648, 

* Ninth Census Report, i, 48. 



Lonjri tilde West 




GREAT MIGRATIONS TOWARD THE WEST 141 

1790 to 151,719 in 1800, and to 228,705 in 1810/ 
Many of the pioneers in the new towns came from the 
oldest parts of Massachusetts, from Plymouth County 
and Cape Cod ; but Andover and Den ward perpetuated 
Andover in Massachusetts.^ Dennysville is a Hingham 
town ; New Vineyard was peopled from Martha's Vine- 
yard ; Kingfield from Weymouth and Kingston. Jay 
was given to sixty-four persons in payment for service 
in the French and Indian War.^ New Hampshire famihes 
also contributed to Maine towns;* — New Portland, 
Hermon, Freedom, Temple, Garland, Dexter, Atkinson, 
Sebec, Hartland, and other towns were peopled directly 
from New Hampshire, and Exeter was named by its first 
settlers from their former home. Maine towns sent some 
of their own people as pioneers to plant new homes in 
Cutler, Auburn, Gouldsborough, Pittsfield, Jackson, 
Garland, Brooks, Greenwood, and many other villages. 
Where land was but twelve and one half cents an acre 
there was little need to go far from home in search of a 
new farm.^ On the northern and eastern boundaries 
immigration turned from Canada south, to settle cheap 

» Ibid., 35. 

^ Nine tenths of the first settlers of Andover, Maine, were from Ando- 
ver, Massachusetts. MS. letter of J. A. Poor, in Williamson, Maine, ii, 
599, n. 

' Coolidge and Mansfield, 164. It long bore the name of Phips's Canada, 
from Captain Phips, one of the grantees. When it was laid out in 1785, it 
was divided into 400-acre shares, of which one was reserved for Harvard 
College, one for the first minister, one for the ministry, and one for 
schools. 

* The material on Maine is found almost entirely in Coolidge and 
Mansfield. 

' This was the price of land in Palmyra in 1800. MS. letter of Samuel 
Lancy, Williamson, Maine, ii, 609 n. 



142 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

lands, as at Madawaska Plantation, which was begun in 
1784 by French Canadians/ 

It was over the Wolfborough road, the " old Brook- 
field road," the Coos road, and by blazed trees that 
settlers found their way into central and northern 
Vermont. The Wolfborough post-road had been of use 
during the Revolution,^ and doubtless had led the way 
for emigrants who heard from returning soldiers of the 
country it opened up before the troops. One would ex- 
pect Wethersfield people as "chronic pioneers" to follow 
up the Connecticut to begin a new town ; and to Middle- 
sex they moved in 1783. The ten families who had gone 
to Addison and Panton from Connecticut in 1770 had 
been driven away during the war and their homes burned; 
in 1783 most of them returned and were followed speedily 
by others.^ From Suffield, Litchfield, Glastenbury, 
Wethersfield, and Hartford, settlers went to Benson.^ 

* Coolidge and Mansfield, 969. In 1794 nineteen new towns were incor- 
porated, fifteen of which had been plantations, " every new town being 
supposed to contain when incorporated at least 500 inhabitants, though in 
some instances the number was less." See Williamson, Maine, ii, 564. 

2 Letter from John Wentworth to T. W. Waldron, October 25, 1774, 
Belknap Papers, pt. iii, 66-59 (Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., 6th ser., vol. iv). 
The "Old Brookfield road " ran to Berlin from the south, and then on to 
Montpelier, and the Coos road from the Connecticut River to Burlington. 
See S. F. Nye, in Vermont Hist. Gaz., iv, 53. From Burlington settlers went 
north by following blazed trees. See B. A. Kingsley, ibid., ii, 201. 

8 Coolidge and Mansfield, 731, 870. For a description of the " Hazen 
road," a great thoroughfare for Vermont settlers going to the north, see 
Thomas Goodwillie, in Vermont Hist. Gaz., i, 266. Originally a road over 
which to convey troops during the Revolution, it was lengthened and re- 
paired by General Hazen, until it extended to Westfield. Afterwards 
branch roads were made on either side of it. 

* Their children formed part of a colony to DuPage County, Illinois, 
later. See Kellogg, in Vermont Hist. Gaz., iii, 408. Also Blanchard, Hist, 
of DuPage County, 84, 85, 197. 



GREAT MIGRATIONS TOWARD THE WEST 143 

To Essex, North Hero, Shelburne, Sheldon, Fairfax, 
Ferrisburgh, Northfield; to Waterbury, from older 
Waterbury, to Fairfield, and a dozen other villages 
swarmed families from most of the Connecticut towns. 
Nor was Massachusetts behind her neighbor as the 
mother of new Vermont settlements. Braintree is the 
child of Braintree on the bay ; West Springfield set- 
tlers made homes beside families from Litchfield, Con- 
necticut, and organized Williston; Worcester County 
towns had representatives in Cabot and Stratton ; a 
family which had started from Cape Ann and had 
halted for a few years in New Hampshire at Hook- 
sett, now joined with Connecticut, Rhode Island, and 
New York people to found Grand Isle. Between 1784 
and 1787 fifty-three families moved to Hinesburgh, and 
two years later joined in organizing a Congregational 
church ; of these fiity-three, two from Canaan, Connecti- 
cut, had built cabins here in 1775, had been driven away 
during the war, and when they returned were reinforced 
shortly by one household from Rutland, another from 
Williamstown, Massachusetts, ten others from New Mil- 
ford and Stonington, Connecticut, while still more came 
from Lanesborough, Williamstown, and Worthington. 
To Westf ord, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode 
Island sent men to plant the town. Ludlow is a Mas- 
sachusetts town. Swanton had many pioneers from Hard- 
wick, Lanesborough, Richmond, Holden, and Barre. 
Westfield, Lowell, — many other towns derived first in- 
habitants from towns in the old "Bay State."* 

1 Pittsfield and Groton were named for the Massachusetts towns ; Rut- 
laud, for the Bay State Rutland. See W. R. Blossom, "Pittsfield," Ver- 
mont Hist. Gaz., iii, 935 ; A. H. Hill, " Groton," ibid., iv, 1146. 



144 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

Nor did Connecticut and Massachusetts send out 
all the pioneers there were in Vermont. Rhode Island 
contributed some, as has been shown; three families 
went to Northfield ; a company of grantees headed by 
Jonathan Arnold obtained in 1786 the grant of St. 
Johnsbury, settled it the same year, and organized it 
in 1790, when it had a population of 143. Burrillville 
families were among the founders of Sutton, Providence 
people among those of Barton, a Glocester man at 
Westfield. New Hampshire towns were swarming also ; 
— Piermont sent pioneers to Cambridge, Fairfax, and 
Johnson; while Claremont, Alstead, Bath, Plaistow, 
Rumney, and many others were represented from one 
end of the state to the other. The older towns in Ver- 
mont, like Bennington and Westminster, were now 
planting new towns, — Groton, Hyde Park, Morristown, 
and many more. From Dutchess County, New York, 
emigrants moved east into Burlington and Huntington, 
while some of the grantees of Waterbury were from 
Newark, New Jersey.^ Maine towns were sending out 
their settlers, and some helped plant Worcester, Ver- 
mont. 

There were still unoccupied tracts in New Hampshire 
and Vermont in 1812 as there were in Maine ; but they 
were barren soil, from which a mere pittance could be 
wrung after months of toil, and though there were men 
who were willing to make a trial of their strength in 
overcoming the difficulties of agriculture on such terms, 

1 C. C. Parker, "Waterbury," Vermont Hist. Gaz.,iv, 813. Settlers 
from Morris County, New Jersey, went to Vermont in considerable num- 
bers at this time. 



GREAT MIGRATIONS TOWARD THE WEST 145 

they were few in number and often easily discouraged. 
Searsburg, in Bennington County, Vermont, had one 
family within its limits from 1812 to 1815 ; in 1820 
its population was nine, but " one moved away." Four 
years later one family came to stay, as did another 
which had come since 1820 ; in 1830 the census reported 
forty people in the town/ James Elliot, the first man in 
Victory, Vermont, stayed but three or four years, and 
for a number of years after his departure the town had 
no inhabitants at all. Finally, Deacon Asa Wells, who 
had been born in Bolton, Connecticut, and had lived 
in Tolland, Massachusetts, in Lunenburg, and then in 
Granby, Vermont, came to Victory and made his home 
here for the rest of his lif e.^ Success, in New Hampshire, 
had but two inhabitants for many years, and Kilkenny 
had in 1850 a population of nineteen.^ The same story 
may be repeated for Maine, which still had good land 
for farming though no one had purchased it. Into the 
counties of Aroostook, Penobscot, Washington, and 
Piscataquis, settlers finally moved, from the older por- 
tions of Maine or the British Provinces chiefly, with 
here and there a Massachusetts family, as in Bradley. 
Some towns grew rapidly; Lee, incorporated in 1832 
with its four hundred people, had been settled since 
1824. The older towns were filling up, however, and 
the population, which in 1820 was 298,269, had leaped 
in 1850 to 583,169.^ 

• George J. Bond, " Searsburg," in Vermont Hist. Gaz., \, 231. 

^ Loomis Wells, " Deacon Asa Wells," in Vermont Hist. Gaz., i, 1048. 
3 Coolidge and Mansfield, 545, 658. 

* Ninth Census Report, i, 35. See frontispiece. 



146 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

The settlement in northern New England after 1781 
is illustrative of several points : first, the heterogeneous 
elements which went to make up a town in which five 
states were represented ; second, how the lines of emi- 
gration crossed and recrossed, as when Newark and New 
York settlers came to Vermont, while Vermont settlers 
moved, as we shall see later, to New York ; and third, 
how for many families the Vermont home was the third 
or fourth which had been planted in a wilderness. Again 
and again there are found such data as this : a man 
from Providence (Rhode Island) had moved to Claren- 
don, Vermont, where he remained for a few years, and 
then took up a new abode in Swanton with the rest of 
the pioneer families; another from Lebanon, Connecticut, 
removed to Hartland, then to Roxbury, Vermont ; still 
another from Preston, Connecticut, to Plainfield, New 
Hampshire, thence to Morristown, Vermont; or from 
Hadley to Worthington, Massachusetts, then to Morris- 
town. The writer of the history of Bloomfield said 
frankly, " But few of the early settlers remained in 
town for any great length of time."^ When Timothy 
Dwight traveled through Vermont in 1805, he noted 
the radical and unconventional ideas of the inhabitants, 
as evidenced in their conversation, their constitution, 
and their educational and religious views. He was con- 
tinually contrasting the condition of affairs in the towns 
through which he passed with the more settled order of 
things in Connecticut, to the disadvantage of Vermont. 
The tendency to go into politics and law seemed to him 
remarkable ; for us it foreshadows the later prominence 

^ William Burbank, " Bloomfield," Vermont Hist. Gaz., i, 950. 



GREAT MIGRATIONS TOWARD THE WEST 147 

of the Vermonter in Wisconsin and Michigan politics, 
and upon the bench in the West as well. 

One observation made by Mr. Dwight in commenting 
upon northern New England was the low moral tone 
which he found prevailing, and which he greatly de- 
plored. He attributed it in large part to indifference 
regarding churches and schools, and cited instances to 
prove his charge in Vermont, in New Hampshire, and 
in Maine.^ A little earlier, however, the first college in 
Maine had been founded at Brunswick, and named for 
the French refugee, Peter Bowdoin. Its original en- 
dowment was five townships of land, and from 1812 to 
1831 it received three thousand dollars annually from 
the general treasury.^ The people of Maine were appar- 
ently conscious of the lack of educational advantages 
for their children, and were determined to perpetuate 
Puritan traditions when they were able. 

The figures of increasing population in northern New 
England seem significant ; but the greatest emigrations 
after 1781 were outside the New England States, to 
Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio, where the history 
of the old states on the Atlantic was to be continued in 

1 See Dwight, Travels, ii, 456-475. He cited New Hampshire towns as 
neglecting chnrch and school. "It is a very great evil to . . . [Wolf- 
borough, Middleton, Tuftonborough and] many others in New Hamp- 
shire, that they are, and for a considerable length of time have been, des- 
titute of well-educated ministers of the gospel. The last minister of Wolf- 
borough died about fourteen years ago: and the reluctance to be at the 
necessary expense has prevented the inhabitants from settling another. 
This is an extensive calamity in New Hampshire." Ibid., iv, 173-175. He 
found the same true in Maine, because of the poverty and weakness of 
new settlements. See ihid., ii, 237. 

' See Williamson, Maine, ii, 562, 563. 



148 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

the newer states their children founded. A differentia- 
tion of three kinds of pioneers became quite apparent 
with this movement to the West, — to Pennsylvania, to 
the Genesee country in New York, to Ohio, Indiana, 
and Illinois/ In the vanguard moved a few restless 
spirits, trappers and hunters primarily, who had lived 
perhaps on the edge of civilization in Vermont or New 
Hampshire, and now moved to the newer " West," a 
region ever shifting before an oncoming army of settlers. 
These pioneers built for themselves rude cabins just at 
the danger line, but made no effort to cultivate more 
than a garden-patch about the rude loghouse which 
served merely as a shelter from rain or snow. They were 
rough men who usually disliked any restraint of law or 
order, and cared not for church or school ; men to whom 
an advancing wave of the next class of pioneers was 
a sign of a country too densely peopled and a warning 
for the hunter to move on farther west. Therefore, these 
forerunners of civilization, who had merely "squatted" 
on the piece of ground they had appropriated, sold a 
shadowy claim to the representatives of the second class 
of frontiersmen, and moved on to a new forest, to go 
through the same process of building a temporary home, 
and again selling out and wandering from the newer 
New England townships. 

' Dwight, Travels, ii, 459 ff. Mr. Dwighfc noted this classification in 
Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York in 1805-20. James Flint, 
in Letters from America, 203-209, gives almost exactly the same idea of 
the people he found in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. He found in 1820 the 
third class most prominent in Pennsylvania and the earlier settled parts 
of Ohio ; the second in the later settled parts of Ohio and Kentucky ; and 
the first in Indiana and Illinois. 



GREAT MIGRATIONS TOWARD THE WEST 149 

The next class was made up of farmers who either 
appropriated the hunters' cabins, or built new loghouses 
of their own, — men who through poverty or discontent 
had taken up the search for a new home; or maybe 
they had the roving spirit which is born in many an 
Anglo-Saxon, and which drives a man to seek new lands 
and explore the wilderness which lies beyond his horizon. 
These farmers cultivated the soil to a limited extent; 
they "girdled" the trees and burned them instead of 
felling them, and their crops were raised on the ground 
still bristling with the stumps of a charred forest. Of 
this class some were ambitious and faded into the third 
class of thrifty farmers ; but others soon became restless, 
and gathering into a covered wagon their few household 
effects and a group of ragged children, sold at a slight 
profit the lands they had purchased of the hunter or at 
second hand from a company of proprietors, and moved 
on again toward the setting sun. 

The lands thus vacated were bought by the repre- 
sentatives of the third and best class of pioneers, — 
those who were young, ambitious, who had a little 
capital with which to buy a farm and rear a family, — 
capital too limited to purchase a home in the East, 
where land had become more dear than suited the purse 
of a farmer's son just beginning his life independently 
of his father's family. To the new home the young man 
brought his bride, and together they saved and planned 
and toiled till the log cabin was replaced by a substan- 
tial house, barns clustered about the home-lot, and from 
this group of buildings stretched away the acres of 
wheat and corn. The farmer's chief desire at this stasre 



150 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

■was to raise more than enough produce for his imme- 
diate needs; the surplus he sold, and the profits he 
invested in new lands about his home-farm. It is this 
class which brings the church, the school, the town- 
meeting; this class which dreams of a college which 
shall reproduce Harvard, Yale, or Dartmouth ; this class 
which " aims at a seat in the legislature or the guber- 
natorial chair. " ^ 

Not always were these three classes distinct ; the first 
might fade into the second, the second into the third, 
and one man might exemj)lify in his own person all three 
types. But the distinction was there, and shrewd travelers 
like Dwight saw it and commented upon it. The first 
two made but little lasting impression upon a new com- 
munity ; temporarily they gave it a hard, rough charac- 
ter, '' with a reputation for recklessness and low morals." 
The third gave tone to a mixed population, and to these 
workers in the wilderness the Western States owe their 
character of to-day. To this character all the elements 
contributed ; — the Southern man, the Pennsylvanian, 
the Kentuckian, each gave his share and lent his tradi- 
tions to the building of a new commonwealth ; but though 
recognizing the part each played, this study concerns 
itself with New England's share in planting new states 
outside the confines of her own original territory. 

Emigration to Pennsylvania, begun on a large scale 
before the Revolution, was continued on a far greater 
plan after the conflict. The terrible massacre of 1778 
had laid the Wyoming country waste ; but General Sul- 

* James Flint says they are " Congressmen, politicians in the legisla- 
ture, or justices of the peace." See Letters from America^ 209. 



GREAT MIGRATIONS TOWARD THE WEST 151 

livan's expedition had made the tracts in northern Penn- 
sylvania again habitable, and as soon as the war was 
over, the settlers who had fled to Orange County, New 
York, to Connecticut, or to the Delaware, returned to 
begin life anew/ Into all the northeastern counties, into 
the newer counties of Elk, Erie, Crawford, Bradford, 
McKean, Schuylkill, Tioga, Susquehanna, Venango, 
Warren, and Allegheny, poured a stream of New Eng- 
landers and New Yorkers, with a sprinkling of New 
Jersey men, Scotch-Irish, and Germans. The Susque- 
hanna Company, not disposed to surrender the West- 
moreland country without a struggle, appointed at a 
meeting in Hartford in December, 1786, twenty-one 
commissioners as a provisional government to be set up 
over the new states they hoped to form by dismember- 
ing Pennsylvania. A constitution was drawn up and 
officers appointed, but the scheme crumbled when 
Pennsylvania erected Luzerne County in 1787-89, es- 
tablished courts and introduced laws.^ The settlers now 
moved in under a clear title, and made permanent homes. 
Erie County became more like New York than Penn- 
sylvania, with its Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Maine 
settlers, several of whom had tried pioneering in New 
York.^ A Congregational church organized in Poultney, 
Vermont, moved bodily to East Smithfield, in Bradford 
County. With the opening of a rough wagon road to 

* Charles Miner, Hist, of Wyoming, 469-475. 

^ Ibid., 401-412. Oliver Wolcott is said to have drawn up the constitu- 
tion ; Major William Judd of Farmington, Connecticut, was to have been 
governor, and Colonel John Franklin of Wyoming, lieutenant-governor, 
H. M. Hoyt, Brief of a title . . . in . . . Luzerne, 73. 

' Sherman Day, Hist. Coll. of Pa., 309. See map opposite. 



152 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

the source of the Tioga River, New England and New 
York people poured over the Alleghany Mountains, — 
hitherto a barrier to settlement. They filled up Tioga 
County, — " the pleasant front yards, gardens, and green 
blinds indicating the origin of the population."^ The 
town of Honesdale, in Wayne County, laid out around 
the court house square, with its shade trees, white houses 
with green blinds, set gable-end to the street "after the 
fashion of New England," and the front yards filled 
with flowers and shrubbery, attested the traditions of 
the Eastern States. Luzerne County was furthermore a 
veritable hotbed of Federalism, true in its political ad- 
herence to its Connecticut tradition. 

Crawford County, which had but 2346 inhabitants 
in 1800, numbered 16,030 in 1830. Here were mingled 
Germans, Scotch-Irish, New Yorkers, and New Eng- 
landers.^ Alleghany College was incorporated at Mead- 
ville in this county in 1817; its first president was 
Timothy Alden ; one of its first donors was Isaiah Thomas 
of Worcester, a clergyman of Salem, and its first acces- 
sion of rare books was the gift of Judge Winthrop of 
Massachusetts.^ In these ways did the Bay State pass on 
her traditions of higher education.* 

* Day, 624-627. This was said of Wellsborough, but it was a description 
which might have been applied to a number of towns similarly founded. 

2 Bates, " Crawford County," in W. H. Egle, Hist, of Pennsylvania, 610. 

3 Day, Hist. Coll. of Pa., '151, 258. 

* The reason why the areas of New England settlement in eastern and 
central Pennsylvania differ in the map opposite page 155, and those op- 
posite pages 159 and 168, is that often the New England element came late 
either into the towns and there made up the merchant and professional 
class, or into the country to buy up farms already settled in order to in- 
crease their productiveness. See Day, Hist. Coll. of Pa., 233, 504, 603; 
Emily C. Blackman, "Susquehanna County," in Egle, Hist, of Pa., 1093. 



GREAT MIGRATIONS TOWARD THE WEST 153 

But the greatest emigration of all those directly fol- 
lowing the Revolution took its way into New York, 
the more conservative element staying nearer the east- 
ern boundary, the venturesome ones going out into the 
wilderness. A strong current set out in 1783-84 from 
the New England States, and speedily the western shore 
of Lake Champlain and the older towns on the Hudson 
felt the influence of the newcomers/ This sort of emi- 
gration is represented in Troy, which had been founded 
before the Revolution, but was now filled up with home- 
seekers from west of the Green Mountains and the Con- 
necticut River, who were looking for a favorable loca- 
tion for trade. They were followed by professional men, 
mechanics, and manufacturers, who saw the opportunity 
which a rapidly increasing population north of Albany 
offered to the "speculative" and "migrating" New 
Englander.^ 

But the great opportunities for expansion lay beyond 
the Hudson, in the central and western portions of the 
state. Pioneers poured into these regions from three 
directions: those from Pennsylvania, especially the New 
Englanders transplanted to the Wyoming Valley and 
driven out from that territory in 1778, pushed up the 
Susquehanna to Tioga Point, from which they' diverged 
east and west ; those who came directly from New Eng- 
land crossed the Hudson River, proceeded to Unadilla, 
thence down the Susquehanna into Chemung or up to 
the Genesee country ; while a third stream from either 
New England, the eastern New York counties, or New 

» W. C. Watson, Essex County, 203. 
» A. T. Weise, Hist, of Troy, 19. 



154 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

Jersey went out through the Mohawk Valley to the 
upper part of the Genesee country, emerging at Buffalo 
about 1800/ 

The first settlers had often become acquainted with 
the lands personally through the campaigns of the Revo- 
lution, or through stories of returning soldiers. During 
the early years of the war, perhaps in 1776, seven pairs 
of brothers, from seven families in Plymouth, Connecti- 
cut, enlisted in the army, were marched westward, and 
stationed at various times at Forts Herkimer, Schuyler, 
and Stanwix, where the surrounding country seemed to 
them especially attractive. At the close of the war they 
went immediately to make homes in the vicinity of Kirk- 
land.^ Doubtless others were led in the same direction 
by the reports of returning soldiers. Judge Hugh White 
of Middletown, Connecticut, a proprietor of lands in 
Oneida County, New York, moved with four grown sons 
(but one of whom was married) to his new possessions 
in 1784.^ To induce his neighbors in Connecticut to fol- 
low him, he was accustomed to send back, when he found 
opportunity, the largest stalks of corn, oats, and wheat, 
with samples of his best potatoes and onions, that his 
old friends might judge for themselves how productive 
was Oneida County soil. " These so far excelled any- 
thing they had been accustomed to see, that very soon 
many came to see the country, and in general, were so 

' H. C. Goodwin, Cortland County, 93. 

2 Rev. A, D. Gridley, Hist, of Kirkland, New York, 19, quotes this from 
an historical address by Judge Williams at some celebration in the town. 

3 Pomroy Jones, Annals of Oneida County, 790. Also Barber and Howe, 
Hist. Coll. of New York, 27. 



GREAT MIGRATIONS TOWARD THE WEST 155 

well pleased that they located in the vicinity," — and 
Whitestown became distinctly a Connecticut settlement.^ 

The history of Binghamton is a little different from 
others which have been mentioned. In 1787 a native of 
Plymouth, Massachusetts, who had survived the mas- 
sacre of Wyoming Valley in 1778 and a later flood of 
the Susquehanna, was told by a fur-trader of the fertile 
land about the site of the future Binghamton, and moved 
there. Only a few weeks elapsed before he was joined 
by two men, natives of Connecticut, who had tried pio- 
neering in Vermont and in the Wyoming Valley. Others 
who came in from Massachusetts and Connecticut found 
no roads after crossing the Hudson, and made their way 
through the woods. By 1815 settlers were here from 
seven Connecticut towns and one New Hampshire vil- 
lage, one Vermont family had built a home, while still 
others were from Massachusetts.^ 

The familiar mode of movement by neighborhoods 
which was as old as the first town in New England was 
exemplified again in the settlement of Hudson, New York, 
by an association of thirty Quaker fishermen from Nan- 
tucket and Martha's Vineyard, who combined at Provi- 
dence in the purchase of lands for a new home and be- 
gan the town of Hudson in 1783.^ A company formed 
at Dighton purchased 46,000 acres in what is now 
Richmond, and planted that town.* 

An enterprise which followed the old lines of purchase 

* See map opposite. 

» J, B. Wilkinson, Annals of Binghamton, 44, 45, 60, 92, 176-210. 
' S. B. Miller, Hist. Sketches of Hudson, 6-8, 85. 

* O. Turner, Phelps- Gorham Purchase, 198, 199. 



156 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

by proprietors who sold to settlers was the speculative 
plan of Phelps and Gorham, a scheme on a far larger 
scale than had ever been the case before the Revolution. 
In 1786 the State of New York, in order to settle the 
claim to a portion of her territory which Massachusetts 
had based upon the ancient limits of her charter, ceded 
to the latter without any equivalent a large tract con- 
sisting of vacant lands in the west central part of the 
state.* The lands having been turned over to Massachu- 
setts, Oliver Phelps of Granville and Nathaniel Gorham, 
also of the Bay State, bought the preemptive rights to 
the lands in western New York for $100,000, payable 
in three installments. The following year the Indian title 
to over two million acres was extinguished by treaty, 
and the Massachusetts Legislature confirmed the grant. 
Thereupon, Phelps and Gorham had their purchase 
divided into townships six miles square, and then sub- 
divided into 160-acre tracts ; a land-office was opened at 
Canandaigua, and about one third of the whole purchase 
was sold to actual settlers or to speculators who sold 
later to settlers.^ Because of the superiority of the soil 
and the exceptional excellence of title, pioneers fairly 
swarmed to the " Genesee country." James Wadsworth, 
a native of Durham, Connecticut, who with his brother 
was traveling west, noted in a letter to his family in 1790 

^ Barber and Howe, Hist. Coll. of New York, 40. There were two tracts 
in the cession, one called indefinitely " The Genesee Country," the other 
including the counties of Browne and Tioga. It was the first which Phelps 
and Gorham bought. 

2 The rest was sold to Robert Morris of Philadelphia, who sold it to an 
Englishman, and the land was sold by the latter in land offices at Geneva 
and Bath. Rev. J. H. Hotchkin, Western New York, 8-10. 



GREAT MIGRATIONS TOWARD THE WEST 157 

that there had arrived that day two vessels from Rhode 
Island, laden the one with twenty-eight passengers, the 
other with thirty, all bound " full speed for the Genesee 
country," and added, " The imigrations [s2c] to the west- 
ward are almost beyond belief." ^ Out to the wilderness 
by way of the Mohawk from Albany, up the valleys 
from the Susquehanna, overland from Vermont, settlers 
poured into every western county by single families, 
by twos and threes, and by whole colonies. In reading 
the local histories, one feels that Connecticut must have 
been beggared of inhabitants, so fast did hundreds of 
her families make their way into New York ; many who 
came from western Massachusetts, eastern New York, 
and from Vermont, had been in those states but for a 
short time, and were Connecticut men by birth.^ Dur- 
ham, New York, is but one instance of a village settled 
from a Connecticut town, whose pioneers preserved the 
memory of the old home east of the Hudson in the name 
of the new.^ 

When in 1796 the British evacuated Fort Oswego, 

* O. TvLTueT, Phelps-Gorham Purchase, 331. Barber says that winter was 
chosen by many as a time to migrate because of the fine sleighing and conse- 
quent ease with which goods could be hauled. See Hist. Coll. of New York, 
40. 

2 Berkshire, Tioga County, was named for Berkshire County, Massa- 
chusetts, from which its first settlers came ; Berkshire County had been 
settled from Connecticut, as has been shown in this study. W. B. Gay, Tioga 
County, 113 ; also Jones, Annals of Oneida County, 13, and Turner, Phelps- 
Gorham Purchase, 164-182. 

8 W. C. Fowler, Hist, of Durham (Connecticut), 214, 215, gives the 
names of thirty emigrants from Durham, Connecticut, to Durham, 
New York, in a letter of Rev. Mr. Timothy Williston, January 26, 
1848. 



158 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

settlement immediately began upon that site; the next 
year or two saw families building homes in Lewis and 
Jefferson counties ; by 1800 the hamlets which stretched 
from Utica to the Genesee River were mostly connected 
with one another by extensions of the main thorough- 
fare, and from that time dates the influence of the western 
counties in the councils of New York/ To learn the 
nature of this enormous movement, one has but to study 
the history of a few representative towns. A semi-cen- 
tennial celebration in Lowville, Lewis County, was held 
in 1826, in which fifty-five old settlers took part. Of 
these, twenty-two had come from Connecticut, eight 
from Massachusetts, sixteen from New York, and one 
each from Rhode Island, Vermont, and New Jersey. 
The twenty-two Connecticut settlers represented four- 
teen towns in every part of the state, while the Massa- 
chusetts men represented seven places, including Bos- 
ton, West Springfield, and others lying between the 
two.^ Thirty-eight persons from Wolcott, New Hamp- 
shire, went in 1803 to Genesee;^ Augusta in Oneida 
County, was a Litchfield County, Connecticut, town, 
Farmington was settled by emigrants from Adams,* and 
indeed all of Berkshire County was a veritable hive, 

1 Barber, Hist. Coll. of N. Y., 40. 

2 F. B. Hough, Lewis County, 297, 298. 

8 As if settlers were not moving in fast enough, a settler in the Gene- 
see country went to Wolcott, New Hampshire, in 1803, called a public 
meeting, gave a description of the New York lands, and urged Wolcott 
people to emigrate. Five families and three unmarried men, thirty-eight 
persons in all, did so at once, in seven wagons. They were twenty-one 
days on the road. See Turner, Phelps-Gorham Purchase, 511. 

* Turner, Phelps-Gorham Purchase, 217-222. 



GREAT MIGRATIONS TOWARD THE WEST 159 

from which workers swarmed into the Phelps-Gorham 
Purchase/ 

Kirkland, in Oneida County, was a typical New Eng- 
land settlement. The preliminary surveys having been 
made in 1786-87, five families from Plymouth, Con- 
necticut, came the following spring from German Flats, 
then the outpost of the region, where they had lived for 
several years. By April the little clearing had thirteen 
families living there, by winter twenty more were estab- 
lished within its boundaries. On April 8, 1787, in the 
unfinished house of Captain Moses Foot, leader of the 
colony, the first church services were held.^ The settlers, 
feeling their isolation and their lack of organization, 
determined to draw up a sort of compact for the regu- 
lation of affairs in their little settlement.^ They all signed 
an agreement that they would abide by its terms. They 
were to choose a secretary as soon as possible ; he was 
to keep a record of the papers, votes, etc., of the settle- 
ment. The draft preserved is but a rough one ; but it 
bears an interesting resemblance to other agreements 
among settlers as to the distribution of land, and the 
necessity in all town business of conforming to the will 
of the majority. ^ 

1 Turner, Phelps-Gorham Purchase, 222. A list of sixty-one settlers in 
Rochester between 1794 and 1819 gives twenty-eight Connecticut men, 
nineteen from Massachusetts, twenty-five from New York, three from Ver- 
mont, eleven from New Hampshire, one from Rhode Island, and one from 
Scotland. Proc. of Rochester Pioneer Society. 3, 4, 11. See map opposite. 

2 Rev. A. D. Gridley, Hist, of Kirkland, 19-58. 

^ P. Jones, Annals of Oneida County, 167, 170, 171. The next year 
twenty more families arrived ; those who came together from Brimfield, 
Massachusetts, settled along one street known ever since as "Brimfield 
Street." 



160 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

A few instances will show the trend of many similar 
personal histories. A young Irishman and his wife left 
the north of Ireland in 1740, and made a new home in 
Plainfield, Connecticut, where they became very well-to- 
do. In 1765 they found it necessary to provide new 
farms and homes for their nine sons and only daugh- 
ter, and as Vermont was then the "new country," where 
cheap lands beckoned the pioneer on, the family moved — 
father, mother, and children — to Windsor, Vermont. 
From this town eight of the nine sons entered the Rev- 
olutionary Army. But after the war was over, thinking 
Vermont offered too few opportunities to the enterpris- 
ing farmer, four of the sons moved to Marcy, Oneida 
County, New York, in 1793-94, and became early set- 
tlers in that town.^ The story might be reproduced in 
many a case. 

It was no wonder that the resemblance of central and 
western New York to New England was so striking as 
to excite comment. Timothy D wight, in traveling west 
from Schenectady, entered New Hartford, — "the first 
New England settlement which we found in this region." 
He noted the neat church with its " pretty steeple," the 
houses built in " New England manner," the " spright- 
liness, thrift, and beauty" of the settlement.^ He recog- 
nized Durham as a New England town by its school- 
houses and churches. The eastern immigrants took 
with them improved methods of agriculture, enter- 
prise, ingenuity, and social habits; by 1813 the new- 
comers were rapidly gaining an ascendancy in the 

* Jones, Annals of Oneida County, 237, 238. 
» Dwight, Travels, iii, 179 ; iv, 17. 



GREAT MIGRATIONS TOWARD THE WEST 161 

state.* Azariah Smith was a typical pioneer ; born in 
Middlefield, Massachusetts, in 1784, he taught school 
■winters and worked on his father's farm summers, till 
a cousin in business in New York induced him in 1807 
to move to Onondaga County, where three years after his 
arrival he owned a small store. He was always remark- 
able for the interest he manifested in the local village 
affairs ; — he was solicitous for the welfare of education, 
for Sunday schools, was a trustee of the village school 
in Manlius, of Manlius Academy, of Hamilton College, 
and of Auburn Theological Seminary. But he went 
beyond his native town, and served in the state legisla- 
ture from 1839 until 1841, where he was placed on the 
committee on prisons and penitentiaries, and suggested 
many valuable reforms in the administration of those 
institutions.^ The biography of Samuel Miles Hopkins, 
who was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, and lived in 
Geneva, New York, shows the same philanthropic zeal 
mingled with shrewd judgment.^ 

The phase of character which most writers on the lo- 
cal history of New York towns emphasize is the strongly 
marked tendency of the New Englanders to establish 
public worship as soon as they arrived. Jay Gould, in 
speaking of the company of twenty heads of families 
and two single men who came in 1799 to Stamford, 
Delaware County, from Fairfield County, Connecticut, 

» H. C. Spafford, Gazetteer of ... N. Y., 36. In 1803 six families from 
Orwell, Vermont, settled Stockholm, St. Lawrence County. They brought 
with them fifty sheep, the first flock in the county. F. B. Hough, St. 
Latorence and Franklin Counties, 473. 

2 J. V. H. Clark, Onondaga, ii, 194-199. 

' S. M. Hopkins, Autobiography, 9-41, in Rochester Hist. Soc. Pub., no. u. 



162 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

notes especially that these pioneers kept Sunday by meet- 
ing at some house in the neighborhood which was cen- 
trally located, and listening to some old sermon read by 
the deacon of the settlement.^ At Bergen, the Guil- 
ford, Connecticut, emigrants " set up public worship at 
once " ; ^ Deacon Patchin, from Connecticut, used from 
the time of his arrival in Newfield to open his house 
every Sunday for worship, and maintained it almost 
alone for ten years. ^ The settlers of Marcellus were 
gathered from Massachusetts, Vermont, and Connecti- 
cut ; they were noted for the anxiety they showed in 
providing for the religious and intellectual education 
of their children, and for their establishment of a school 
two years after their arrival.^ A Congregational church 
was formed in Lafayette by members from Berkshire 
and Hampshire counties in Massachusetts in 1804, ser- 
vices having been held previously in the house of a Con- 
gregationalist from Norwich, Connecticut.^ Public wor- 
ship was instituted by a pioneer of Genoa immediately 
after his arrival ; six years later the church of sixteen 
members was organized.^ Several colonies in Essex 
County brought their ministers with them.^ 

One significant change was wrought in church organ- 
ization by the process of transplanting from New Eng- 

* Jay Gould, History of Delaware County, 197-202. 

2 Rev. J. H. Hotchkin, Western New York, 502. 

3 lUd., 414. 

* J. V. H. Clark, Onondaga, ii, 290. Also W. C. Watson, Essex Co., 210, 
speaks of voluntary support of schools. 

6 Clark, Onondaga, ii, 283-286. 

6 Hotchkin, Western New York, 355, 356. 

' Watson, Essex County, 310. 



GREAT MIGRATIONS TOWARD THE WEST 163 

land. Congregationalism had been the prevailing form 
of church government in Massachusetts and Connecti- 
cut, and the emigrants from those states had taken 
their individualistic administration with them to their 
new homes in the wilderness. But poverty stared the 
pioneers in the face ; although they wanted the benefits 
of churches and public worship for themselves and for 
their children, they were often too poor and too few in 
numbers to support a minister for themselves. Presby- 
teries were established early in western New York, and 
under these organizations many weak Congregational 
churches placed themselves, under an " accommodation 
system," by which they retained most of their own 
peculiar administrative forms and their own creed, yet 
had the advantage of united support from their neighbor 
churches. The Congregational Church of Florence, 
Oneida County, was organized in 1816 with ten mem- 
bers, but soon joined the Presbytery on the " accommo- 
dation system " ; ^ the Congregational Church of Candor, 
organized in 1808, became Presbyterian in 1821 ; the 
First Presbyterian Church of Owego was organized in 
1817 as a Congregational church, was soon taken under 
the care of the Cayuga and Tioga Presbyteries, and in 
1831 abandoned Congregationalism and adopted the 
Presbyterian form of government in f ull.^ Seventy years 
after its establishment the Congregational Church of 
Kirkland became Presbyterian because the Congre- 
gationalists had become weak in that region, and the 

' Jones, Annals of Oneida County, 150, 

^ W. B. Gay, Tioga County, 402, 403. In 1850 forty-six members with- 
drew, and formed a Congregational church. 



164 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

Presbyterians comparatively strong/ In Marcellus, Con- 
gregationalists, Presbyterians, and Baptists worshiped 
together for twenty years, — a witness to frontier toler- 
ation and a spirit of mutual forbearance born of wilder- 
ness life.^ 

The need for preachers in the new settlements reacted 
upon the older states by fostering anew the missionary 
spirit which had led the Puritans in their early history 
to an endeavor to rescue the souls of the Indians from 
"a heathen doom." The Presbyterians and Congrega- 
tionalists of New England sent before 1800 at least 
thirty-seven ministers either to report the spiritual neces- 
sities of the frontiersmen, or to labor in the wilderness.^ 
A missionary society organized in 1779 in Massachu- 
setts, began operations in 1800 in the Genesee country ; * 
the Hampshire Missionary Society of Northampton, 
Massachusetts, directed its attention for twenty years to 
the settlers of western New York, as did the society of 
Hopkinton, New Hampshire. The Connecticut Society 
worked on a different basis, for their missionaries were 
usually on leave of absence from their own congrega- 
tions for three or four months, during which time they 
ministered to the needs of the New York settlers. 

The New Englanders carried with them, also, their 
town-meeting. In Canandaigua, the first assemblage 
of settlers was held in 1791, two years after the first 
comers arrived. Up to 1805-06, there was no govern- 

* A. D. Gridley, History of Kirkland, 98. 
2 Clark, Onondaga, ii, 290, 291. 

s E. H. Roberts, New York, ii, 486. 

* Hotchkin, Western New York, 184, 186, 187, 188. 



GREAT MIGRATIONS TOWARD THE WEST 165 

ment in western New York save such town organ- 
ization as the early settlers had established ; the whole 
of the territory west of the Genesee River was in- 
cluded in the town of Northampton, but the vicinity 
of Buffalo lay beyond the pale of the county system. In 
1808 the legislature organized Niagara County, with 
Buffalo as the county seat, on condition that the Hol- 
land Land Company (which owned the tract so organ- 
ized) should build a courthouse and jail, and convey 
them to the county/ But the final arrangement was not 
that of the New England town-meeting as it had existed 
in Massachusetts or Connecticut, for in New York the 
mixed system of county and town government had 
obtained ever since the Duke's Laws of 1664 had been 
promulgated. Whenever a new town was erected, four 
justices of the peace were chosen at the first election, 
and these presided at a town-meeting where the town 
officers were chosen : the usual New Eno^land ones with 
the addition of a supervisor to receive and pay out town 
moneys, keep accounts, sue in the name of the town, 
and cause town surveys to be made. This supervisor is 
to-day as he was then, — the link between town and 
county; he meets once a year with supervisors from 
every other town in the county, and represents his town 
on the board so formed, to make laws for the corporate 
property of the county, have charge of its accounts, and 
audit debts and bills of all officers and other persons 
outstanding against the towns. In addition to the board 
of supervisors, the county has its treasurer, clerk, sher- 

» Wm. Ketchum, History of Buffalo, ii, 230, 231. 



166 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

iff, coroner, surrogate, and district attorney/ Thus the 
town government of New England takes a subordinate 
place when upon it is superimposed the county govern- 
ment as in the New York system. 

The settlement of western New York is typical of 
the later emigration into the Northwest Territory, and 
so deserves a general resume. The restless and discon- 
tented elements moved first ; among the pioneers who 
emigrated to the Genesee country in 1788-89, before 
the Indian title was extinguished, were Jemima Wilkin- 
son and the followers she had secured to practice her 
peculiar religious ideas, — ideas which could not be 
tolerated in their New England homes.^ But the next 
settlers went for good, cheap land; therefore a very 
considerable portion of those who emigrated to western 
New York were farmers in the " meridian of life," 
whose children, acquaintances, and relatives made up 
the settlements. Generally they were supplied with 
enough money not only to buy their farms, but also to 
make improvements, and therefore were exempt from 
the privations of the earliest pioneers who had sold out 
to these later comers and emigrated west. Mechanics 
followed farmers, in the hope of attaining greater pros- 
perity than they had enjoyed in their old homes, " by 
adding the business of a farm to their mechanic employ- 
ment." Mills were erected, and the whole community 
took on an appearance of permanence which it had 
lacked in the earlier days.^ Here, however, in conse- 

^Rev. Statutes of Neio York, i, 110, 339-342, 365-367. 
2 O. Turner, Phelps-Gorham Purchase, 153-162. 
' Hotchkin, Western New York, 25; also Jones, Annals of Oneida Co., 
639, 640. 



GREAT MIGRATIONS TOWARD THE WEST 167 

quence of the intermixture of emigrants, diversity in 
thought and taste were apparent, and the churches, 
town-meetings, and schools were no longer precisely of 
the Puritan type, though the traditions of all were pre- 
served in the new institutions.* With the arrival of the 
first emigrants from New England, in the early days of 
New York, the incoming missionaries had been a great 
stimulus to education, churches had also flourished, and 
the interior of the state found an attraction in the field 
offered, and churches were widely extended as the pop- 
ulation increased. " Every new method in religion, 
every new suggestion in theology, found hospitable 
reception there," ^ though the theories were not always 
sane or practical. The Oneida community is but one 
illustration ; Mormonism, whose founder was by birth 
a Vermont man, as was its first great president, Brigham 
Young, shows a phase of peculiar religious enthusiasm 
associated with communal ideas.^ 

1 Samuel Hopkins noted the difference between the state of society in 
his native town of Goshen, Connecticut, and that of his new home in New 
York. He had never seen in his native town a person of " competent age 
to read and write, who could not do both." He testified to the high grade 
of general intelligence in Connecticut, and found a sharp contrast in 
western New York. See S. M. Hopkins, Autobiography, 19, in Rochester 
Hist. Soc. Pub., no. ii. 

2 E. H. Roberts, New York, ii, 559. 

' Warsaw will serve as a type of the growth of a town in New York 
between 1812 and 1837. Settled in 1803-04 from Vermont by way of 
Granville, it had not many inhabitants in its early years. One of the early 
settlers who arrived at the age of forty had already moved six times 
since in his childhood his parents had left his birthplace of Bozrah, Con- 
necticut. In Colchester and in Hebron, in Sandisfield and Great Barring- 
ton, in Green River and Genesee, he had tried his luck, and finally settled 
in Warsaw. His neighbors came from Londonderry, Bath, Poplin, Leba- 
non, and Richmond, New Hampshire ; from Bennington, Pawlet, Hub- 



168 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

After 1812 the interest in settlement centres else- 
where ; " the West " now moved on into western Ohio, 
Indiana, and Illinois. The overflow still carried settlers 
to New York and Pennsylvania, but the process was 
now one of filling in states whose organization was per- 
fected, and their institutions no longer in the formative 
stage.^ The emigrants from New England took their 
thrift and enterprise with them, and contributed sub- 
stantially to the prosperity of their adopted homes. It 
seemed to Timothy Dwight that the inhabitants of New 
York and New England were substantially one people, 
" with the same interests of every kind inseparably 
united." ^ When this observant traveler made a journey 

bardton, Fair Haven, and Shaftsbury, Vermont ; from Attleborough, 
Barnstable, Rehoboth, Wilbraham, and Hanover, Massachusetts ; from 
Canaan, Lebanon, Canterbury, Cheshire, Hartford, Warren, Guilford, 
Hartland, and Colchester, Connecticut ; and from Scituate, Rhode Island ; 
— arriving from 1804 to 1833. Much of Chautauqua County, settled after 
1804 (and quickly after 1812), shows the same influx of population from 
all over New England during the thirty years following the war. See 
A. W. Young, Hist, of Warsaw, 234-236, 257 ; also id., Hist, of Chautauqua 
County, 350-364. 

' P. A. Hamilton, in an article on " Some Southern Yankees," in the 
American Historical Magazine, iii (Oct., 1898), 304-309, gives some inter- 
esting illustrations of the migrations of New Englanders from 1795 to 
1817. Lewis Judson of Stratford, Connecticut, founded in Mobile, Ala- 
bama, soon after 1795, the trading establishment of John Forbes and Co. 
Peter Hobart, a Vermonter, had about the same year a mill in Mobile. 
Cyrus Sibley of Massachusetts came by way of the Natchez settlement to 
Mobile. Josiah Blakeley of New Haven moved to Mobile about 1806, 
after six years' residence in Santiago de Cuba. President Jefferson assisted 
the movement, according to Mr. Hamilton, by the distribution of South- 
ern offices to Northern men. Although St. Stephens, the new capital of 
Alabama, was founded in 1817 by a large number of Southern men, there 
was one Silas Dinsmore of New Hampshire among them. 

^ Dwight, Travels, iv, 527. See map opposite. 



GREAT MIGRATIONS TOWARD THE WEST 160 

in 1821 to Niagara, he noted the increase in New 
York's population from 1790, when it was 340,120, 
through 1810, when it was 484,620, till 1820, when it 
had reached 959,220. He estimated that from three 
fifths to two thirds of this increase had originated from 
New England, and thought the population increasing 
continually; he considered New York would be ulti- 
mately but "a colony from New England," whose 
inhabitants crowded in for commercial as well as for 
agricultural betterment.* 

Into the history of New York, and to a less degree 
into that of Pennsylvania, are woven strands which only 
New England could have contributed. From 1783, 
when the great movement into central New York began, 
down to 1820, when its climax was reached, the history 
of New York was largely one of immigration, of new 
settlements, of frontier influences, shaping the future 
of the larger half of the state. By 1820 our interest 
lies elsewhere ; the movement has lost its distinctively 
pioneer features, and one must follow the flood farther 
west, there to find the story repeated, — the same, yet 
ever varying. 

* Ibid., iii, 266, 267. There was also at the close of the Revolution a 
decided movement towards the Canadian lands just over the border, espe- 
cially from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Vermont. Children of these 
pioneers often in the '40's and '50's moved back into the " States," set- 
tling in Michigan and Wisconsin. See Wva.Ketchuzn, Hist, of Buffalo, ii, 
142 ; and John Maude, Visit to Niagara, 60, 120, 127, 133. 



170 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 

The sources for Pennsylvania history are not very different from those 
mentioned in the notes on Chapter V. There are a few good articles, such 
as H. M. Hoyt's " Brief of a title in the seventeen townships in the county 
of Luzerne," available in the Pennsylvania Historical Publications. M^ss L. 
C. Sanford's History of Erie County, Pennsylvania, was useful. But the 
great mass of literature on Pennsylvania local history deals with the Ger- 
mans, Quaker, or Scotch-Irish settlement, or with the obvious New Eng- 
land towns in the Westmoreland district. 

For New York history there is almost an embarrassment of riches. 
Such local histories as these are accurate and excellent : J. V. H. Clark, 
Onondaga (2 vols., Syracuse, 1849) ; Rev. J. H. Hotchkin, A History of 
the Purchase and Settlement of Western New York (written by a missionary 
to that part of the state) ; O. Turner, Pioneer History of the Holland Pur- 
chase of Western New York (Buffalo, 1849), and his other work. History 
of the Pioneer Settlement of Phelps and Gorham's Purchase, and Morris' Re- 
serve (the latter having a supplement giving the history of Monroe County) ; 
Rev. A. D. Gridley, History of Kirkland. There are also some good county 
histories, notably the following : W. B. Gay (editor). Historical Gazetteer 
of Tioga County, New York, 1785-1888; H. C. Goodwin, Pioneer History of 
Cortland County. . . ; F. B. Hough, History of Lewis County, and another 
work by the same author, A History of St. Lawrence and Franklin Counties ; 
W. C.Watson, The Military and Civil History of the County of Essex; A. W. 
Young, History of Chautauqua County, and his earlier work. History of the 
Town of Warsaw. Reference has also been made to the Publications of 
the Rochester Historical Society, and to the Proceedings of the Pioneer 
Society of Rochester. Ellis H. Robert's New York (2 vols.), in the 
American Commonwealth Series, is popular, like all of that series, but is 
useful at times for special study. 

Timothy Dwight's shrewd observations in his carefully compiled Trav- 
els in New England and New York (4 vols., New Haven, 1821), can be 
drawn upon again and again. He not only conversed with people wherever 
he went, but made keen deductions from his information. James Flint's 
Letters from America (Edinburgh, 1822) is a work much like Timothy 
Dwight's, but from quite a different standpoint. It is especially valuable for 
observations on Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. John Maude, Visit to the Falls 
of Niagara in 1800 (London, 1826), published his book at first anony- 
mously. It contains much material on western New York towns in 1800. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE PLANTING OF A SECOND NEW ENGLAND 
1787-1865 

The years just succeeding the Revolution had been 
characterized, as has been shown in the preceding chap- 
ter, by unprecedentedly large emigrations from all of 
New England into the unsettled parts of New York 
and Pennsylvania, as well as to the still unoccupied 
portions of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. But 
even these immense tracts were insufficient to satisfy 
those who were in quest of new homes, and the pressure 
exerted upon the frontier line everywhere was greater 
than it had ever been before. The dangers looming 
large before the would-be pioneer were the same ones 
that his ancestors had met ; but of them all, the danger 
of hostilities begun by the dispossessed Indians was 
greatest. One of the first duties of the new government 
just forming was to make habitable those regions be- 
yond the Appalachian Mountains where was destined to 
be planted a second New England. 

The story of the settlement of Ohio has many points 
of resemblance to the history of the beginnings in the 
coast states ; yet in one feature there lies an essential 
difference. The states that had been settled as English 
colonies had each had their own lands, granted with 
more or less indefinite boundaries by some English king. 
These lands were at the disposal of the colonial legisla- 



172 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

tures, which made preemptive grants to settlers or to a 
group of proprietors, by vrhom the Indian title was 
extinguished, generally by purchase. If the transaction 
had been made by proprietors, they often sold the lands 
to actual settlers, and pocketed the gains. After the 
Declaration of Independence had transformed the colo- 
nies into states, the situation as to unappropriated lands 
lying within the boundaries of those states was quite 
unchanged, and the process of settling unoccupied tracts 
was not essentially different from what it had been be- 
fore 1776. Even in New York the termination of the 
dispute between that state and Massachusetts over the 
lands beyond the Hudson River which both claimed did 
not alter the mode of disposing of vacant lands ; the 
story of settlement in the Phelps-Gorham tract and in 
the Holland Purchase is not at all unlike the story of 
settlement in the preceding century, save that it took 
place on a far larger scale and far more rapidly than 
had seemed possible before that time. 

But with the cession of Western lands to the general 
government in 1781, the whole situation was changed ; 
now the seller of lands beyond the western boundaries 
of New York, Pennsylvania, and the coast states to the 
territory of Florida, was the United States, — not any 
one state. From that time until the present day the 
Federal government has had at its disposal large areas 
of land, — prairie, timber, salt, and mining tracts, 
— all of which it has been ready to sell at the lowest 
possible terms to actual settlers. So far as the United 
States has been concerned, there has not been any 
speculative scheme in mind, no desire to make money 



THE PLANTING OF A SECOND NEW ENGLAND 173 

out of the prospective emigrant ; when speculatioi> has 
taken place, it has been possible only after the tracts 
have passed out of the hands of the general government. 
To the federal authorities, moreover, there passed, with 
the cession of the land, the responsibility for quieting 
the Indians, and the treaties which followed the close 
of the Revolution form the basis for settlement west of 
Pennsylvania and New York. The new nation had no 
money in its treasury, but it had plenty of land; and 
the first payments of the officers and soldiers who had 
won the struggle which ended in the formation of a 
new nation were made in the only commodity available 
for the purpose, — tracts of unoccupied soil. In order 
to make these bounty lands and military tracts habit- 
able, a series of Indian treaties was entered into, begin- 
ning with that of Fort Stanwix in 1784, followed by 
the Fort Mcintosh peace of 1785, and made definite 
and effectual by the treaty of Greenville of 1794, when 
settlement had been progressing for seven years under 
the Ordinance of 1787. By the peace of Greenville the 
Indian tribes concerned gave up absolutely all title to 
the greater part of what is now the State of Ohio. By 
1805 settlement had pressed up to the very edge of the 
land ceded in 1794; thereupon a succession of new 
treaties opened up the rest of the State of Ohio as well 
as lands beyond the western boundary for the outgoing 
flood of emigration.^ The new part of the process, then, 
is the part played by the Federal government. The only 
place where old methods still obtained was in that 

> These treaties are well summarized in Howe, Historical Collections of 
Ohio, i, 36-43 (ed. 1904). 



174 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

district extending westward halfway across the State 
of Ohio, and occupying approximately an eighth of the 
whole area of that state, — the district known as the 
Western Reserve, which Connecticut had specifically 
retained at the time of the general cessions. Here the 
process of peopHng the new country was exactly like 
the old method wherehy Connecticut herself, and later 
her extensive Westmoreland, had been covered with 
towns and farms. It is significant and interesting, more- 
over, to note that the proceeds of sales in the Western 
Reserve went to swell the school fund of the mother state. 
Beginning in 1787, the tide of emigration poured out 
beyond the borders of the thirteen original states, into 
a practically unknown and unbroken wilderness. By 
wagons, by rafts, hundreds of families from New Eng- 
land, along with their neighbors in the Middle States, 
followed the Mohawk Valley or the old Braddock 
Road, or floated down the Ohio,^ to plant a new state 
which should be but a younger New England on the 
shores of Lake Erie and on the banks of the Muskingum. 
The process of emigration was for their descendants 
what it had been for the Puritans themselves; — from 
those early days when the Rev. Mr. Hooker and his 
congregation had made their way from Newtowne to the 
Connecticut River, until the time, two centuries later, 
when the Rev. Mr. Shipherd took his colony to plant 
a new town and a college at Oberlin, thousands of New 
Englanders had carried their ideals and their traditions 

1 Professor A. B. Hulbert, Historic Highways of America (16 vols., 
1902-05), has given much detail as to the routes to the West. Another 
admirable collection is that of Dr. R. G. Thwaites, Early Western Travels 
(32 vols., 1904-07). 



90 Longitude West 86 from Greeawich 82 




THE PLANTING OF A SECOND NEW ENGLAND 175 

into the wilderness. There, time after time, had they 
organized church and school side by side, in a community 
■where each settler had a voice in the control of local 
affairs, and might impress his individuality upon a new 
commonwealth in such measure as was possible from 
his training and ability. Whether the descendant of the 
Puritan emigrated to the shores of the Connecticut 
River, or to Ohio, he emigrated in the same way, with 
the same ideals steadfastly set before his eyes. 

The first New England settlement in the Northwest 
Territory was made on the Ohio River, at Marietta, by 
officers and men of the Massachusetts, Rhode Island, 
and Connecticut line.* These soldiers had, on March 1, 
1786, met at the "Bunch of Grapes" Tavern in Boston, 
in response to a call which General Rufus Putnam and 
General Benjamin Tupper had issued to every county in 
Massachusetts, asking that one or two delegates be sent 
to the appointed place on that day. Only eleven persons 
responded, but the Ohio Land Company was formed then 
and there. ^ Through one of the directors, the Rev. 
Manasseh Cutler of Salem, Massachusetts, purchase was 
made of a large tract in southeastern Ohio; shares were 
distributed to the proprietors according to the amount 
each paid in, with a reservation of one section (640 acres) 
for schools, one section for religious institutions, and 
two townships for a college. In 1786 the town of Mari- 
etta was laid out and the first settlers arrived. A Con- 
gregational church was formed at once with thirty-one 
members, fourteen from Massachusetts, sixteen from 

^ See map opposite. 

2 J. H. Perkins, Annals of the West, 283, 284. 



176 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

Connecticut, and one from Linlithgow, Scotland/ In 
1797 Muskingum Academy, the mother of the later 
Marietta College, was founded, — eleven years after the 
first settler had arrived in Marietta. 

The pioneers of Marietta represented very accurately 
the New England movement to the West. Ruf us Put- 
nam, the leader of the enterprise, had served his appren- 
ticeship in the wilderness, first with Phineas Lyman as a 
surveyor of the Mississippi tract, then as a general in 
the Revolution, and later as surveyor-general of the dis- 
trict of Maine. ^ Upon his return to his home in Rutland, 
Massachusetts, he wrote to General Washington urging 
that bounty lands be granted in Ohio, as there "are 
thousands in this quarter who will migrate" — as soon 
as settlements could be made with safety.' The first 
company left Dan vers on the first day of December, 1787 ; 
the second left Hartford one month later. Putnam him- 
self was after his removal in 1790 identified with every 
movement in Ohio: he was one of the first trustees of 
Ohio University, active in forming a Bible society, a 
supporter of schools, and a member of the constitutional 
convention of Ohio in 1803. " The impress of his char- 
acter is strongly marked on the population of Marietta, 
in their buildings, institutions, and manners. " * Among 

* Rev. C. E. Dickinson, First Congregational Church of Marietta, 164. 
The Massachusetts members were from Boston, Middleton, Brookfield, 
Chester, Conway, Rutland, Westborough, and Chesterfield; those from 
Connecticut had lived in Colchester, Canaan, Lyme, Lebanon, North Lyme, 
Saybrook, and Middletown. Ibid., 120. 

' See Williamson, Maine, ii, 507. 

' Dr. S. P. Hildreth, Biographical and Historical Memoirs of the Early 
Pioneer Settlers of Ohio, 14, 95, 96. 

« Ihid., 119. 



THE PLANTING OF A SECOND NEW ENGLAND 177 

his Massachusetts comrades were James Varnum of 
Dracut ; General Benjamin Tupper of Stoughton ; Colo- 
nel Ebenezer Sproat of Middleborough ; Rev. Daniel 
Story of Boston, the first minister of the Marietta colony ; 
. Captain William Dana of Cambridge ; Captain Robert 
Oliver of Boston, president of the Ohio legislative coun- 
cil, 1800 to 1803 ; and Major Robert Bradford, a lineal 
descendant of the governor of the Plymouth colony. The 
movement was not, however, wholly a Massachusetts 
venture, though the initiative had come from that state : 
— there were men from Rhode Island, Connecticut, and 
New Hampshire, whose names are inseparably connected 
with the story of Marietta. Such an one was Abraham 
Whipple, of Rhode Island, who had been involved in 
the Gaspee affair;* Jonathan Devol of Tiverton, in the 
same state, and Griffin Greene of Warwick. From New 
Hampshire came two Gilmans of Exeter, and Dr. Jabez 
True of Hampstead, the first physician in Marietta. From 
Middletown, Connecticut, the pioneers took Return Jona- 
than Meigs as surveyor for their company. Of such Puri- 
tan stuff were the early inhabitants of southeastern Ohio.^ 

* Hildreth, Pioneer Settlers, 127. Whipple was born in Providence, 
Rhode Island, in 1733. After the burning of the Gaspee, he received the 
following note from Sir James Wallace, commander of the frigate Rose, 
in Newport harbor : — 

" You, Abraham Whipple, on the 17th of June, 1772, burned his ma- 
jesty's vessel, the Grape, and I will hang you at the yard-arm. 

James Wallace. " 
The following was Whipple's reply : — 

"To Sir James Wallace: 

Sir, — Always catch a man before you hang him. 

Abraham Whipple." 

' Hildreth, Pioneer Settlers, gives lives of twenty-six Marietta pioneers, 
every one with a Puritan name and a record of service to his country. 



178 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

While these settlers were planting New England tra- 
ditions on the Ohio River, their friends and neighbors 
were beginning homes in the wilderness on the shores 
of Lake Erie. From Conneaut/ the wave of settlement 
flowed over northeastern Ohio. In 1800 settlements had 
been begun in thirty-five of the one hundred and three 
townships of the Western Reserve east of the Cuyahoga, 
and one thousand people had settled there.^ By 1812 
nearly half the state was dotted with towns and farms. 
To Plymouth, Ohio, from Plymouth, Connecticut ; to 
the new Norwalk from the old; to Greenwich from 
Greenwich on Long Island Sound, — the very names of 
the towns indicate the origin of their founders. It was 
said of the first settler of Butler County, who came in 
1801 from Chelmsford, Massachusetts, that he was in 

C. M. Walker, Athens County, 371, 372, corrects the story of the "coon- 
skia library, " which had stated that the first library in Ohio was provided 
at Amestown by the sale of coonskins in Boston and the purchase of books 
with the proceeds. Jacob Burnet, in Notes on the Early Settlement of the 
Northwestern Territory, 44, comments upon the retention by these settlers 
of many of the customs and habits of their Puritan ancestors; he notes 
their "veneration" for the "institution of religion, literature, and moral- 
ity," as illustrated by their immediate organization of a church and a 
school. In both the Ohio Purchase and the Symmes Purchase (made for 
men of the New Jersey line in the southwestern corner of Ohio), section 29 
was reserved regularly in each township for the support of a minister. 
There was also in each a reservation of land for a college. Doubtless 
many of the Symmes company and the later settlers were of New Eng- 
land stock. See Howe, Hist. Coll. of Ohio, 562. 

1 Settled in 1796. See A. B. Hinsdale, Old Northwest, 362. In 1796 Ohio 
had five bodies of population : Massachusetts was stationed at Marietta, 
New Jersey about Cincinnati, Virginia at Chillicothe, Connecticut in 
Western Reserve, and the " seven ranges " on the east from Pennsylvania 
and Virginia. See Alfred Mathews, O^to,232, 233. In 1798 the population 
of the territory was five thousand. See Burnet, Notes, 288. 

* J. H. Perkins, Annals of the West, 473, See map opposite. 



90 Longitude West 85 firom Greenwich 80 




THE PLANTING OF A SECOND NEW ENGLAND 179 

every way fitted for pioneer life, since his forefathers 
had suffered just such toil and hardship as he was to 
meet, when they helped settle Massachusetts, New Hamp- 
shire, and Maine/ The first settlers in Ashtabula County 
towns, in Conneaut and Austinsburgh, were from Con- 
necticut, as were those in Burton (Geauga County). 
Some families went from Buffalo by water, whereas 
others struck out through the wilderness. Although the 
pioneer settlers arrived only in 1798 and 1799, the first 
church in the Western Reserve was formed in 1801. 
The nearest mill was forty miles away. The founders of 
Palmyra, Deerfield, and Ravenna, in Portage County, 
were from Connecticut and Massachusetts, as were the 
pioneers of Lake County. General Edward Paine, who 
began the village of Painesville, was born in Bolton, 
Connecticut, had served in the Revolutionary War, and 
at the age of fifty-four removed with a company of sixty- 
six people from his New York home. Ellsworth, in Ma- 
honing County, was settled by Connecticut people with 
a few families from Maryland and Pennsylvania. 

A typical pioneer was James Kilbourne of Granby, 
Connecticut, who formed in 1802 a company with seven 
associates to move to the Northwest Territory. Kil- 
bourne was sent on ahead to explore the country and 
pick out a tract for forty families ; upon his return a 
" Scioto Company " was formed, forty persons admitted, 
and articles of association signed.^ In 1803 a school- 

1 This was Jeremiah Betterfield. J. McBride, Pioneer Biography of 
Butler Couniy, ii, 161, 170. 

^ This is uot the famous Scioto Company of 1787, which sold land to 
the ill-fated Frenchmen who founded Gallipolis ; for that company, see 



180 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

house, a log church, a blacksmith shop, and twelve cab- 
ins were erected where Worthington now stands, and 
one hundred persons had arrived at their new homes. 
Here was formed the first Episcopal church in Ohio, 
and Worthington College was chartered in 1817, with 
Mr. Kilbourne as President. Nor did that energetic pio- 
neer confine his labors to his own town, Worthington ; 
he served in Congress and in the Ohio legislature, and 
early formed an abolition society.^ 

When the people of Granville, Massachusetts, de- 
cided to move, their first care was to select that "pe- 
culiar blending of hill and valley" to which they were 
accustomed. Avoiding swamps, bottomlands were chosen, 
and Granville, a New England town in central Ohio, 
was founded. The Congregational church of twenty- 
four members was organized in the old home and trans- 
planted, pastor, deacons, and members, with the colony.^ 
They drew up a sort of compact and a constitution by 
which their material well-being was to be regulated, — 
documents which bear a striking similarity to the Spring- 
field compact of 1636, though they were formulated a 
century and a half after William Pynchon and his com- 
rades moved to the Connecticut River. Having organ- 
ized their church and drawn up their compact, the col- 
ony of one hundred and seventy-six persons took leave 
of their Massachusetts home, and for forty-six days made 

Ohio Arch, and Hist. Soc. Pub., iii, 107-136. Joel Barlow's name is insep- 
arably connected with that speculation. 

1 Ohio Arch, and Hist. Pub., iv, 31-43. 

' Rev. Beuj. Talbot in Papers of the Ohio Church History Society, \, 30. 
A coeducational college was formed here in 1827. See N. N. Hill, Jr. 
(ed.), Licking County, 449. 



THE PLANTING OF A SECOND NEW ENGLAND 181 

their way toward the West. When they arrived at the 
site of their proposed town, they released their oxen 
from the wagons, and then hstened to a sermon by their 
pastor. The scene takes one back two centuries, to the 
planting of Plymouth or of Hartford ; the two hundred 
years had altered marvelously little the Puritan concep- 
tion of the emigi-ant's first duties in his new home. To 
the north, the Becket Land Company, of Becket, Berk- 
shire County, Massachusetts, purchased a township in 
Portage County, Ohio, and there planted the town of 
Windham between 1811 and 1817. The two upper tiers 
of townships in Portage County were so like New Eng- 
land that the fact was remarkable, and a native of any 
other state was rarely to be found there ; in the south- 
ern part of the country was a mingling of New England- 
ers and Pennsylvanians, with here and there a family 
from Virginia, Maryland, or the Carolinas.^ Many a 
country in the central and southern part of the state 
had the same heterogeneous population ; but the West- 
ern Reserve was almost pure Connecticut stock, save 
in the southeastern portion, where might be found such 
a mixture of elements as that which has been described 
in Portage County. 

By 1810 the frontier line in Ohio extended in a curve 
from the shore of Lake Erie to the western border of 
the state, leaving nearly half the whole area unoccupied. 

1 R. C. Brown, in Hist, of Portage County, 229, 238, 572. One can see 
the difficulty of drawing a line between New England stock and New 
Jersey stock in Ohio, as when Newark, Ohio, was laid out by a Newark, 
New Jersey, man on the plan of his old home ; but the older Newark 
was a New England town, and the new Newark is very like its near 
neighbor, Granville, which reproduced Granville in the Bay State. 



182 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

Southerners from Virginia and Kentucky had pushed 
their way north from tlie Ohio River, Pennsylvaniaus 
and New Yorkers had worked inland from the eastern 
border, while New England men and women had built 
homes in half of the Western Reserve, in the Marietta 
reofion, and were scattered here and there in the central 
and southern portions of the state as well.^ The war of 
1812 affected outlying settlements, like those in the 
northwestern portion of the state, where the occupation 
of such counties as Medina was directly retarded by 
fear of the Indians.^ The return of peace meant open- 
ing up new lands, for the savages now had no British 
allies to fall back upon for support, and were gradually 
pushed farther and farther away into the lands across 
the Mississippi. But in the east certain economic con- 
ditions attendant upon the war also stimulated emigra- 
tion. The last years of the conflict had borne hard upon 
the population of the New England coast, what with 
invasions like that of Falmouth and Portland, and the 
seizure of numbers of coasting vessels. Prices had risen 

* See map on the opposite page. The opening of even snch rude trails 
as " Zane's Trace " had an enormous influence in developing Ohio. Ebe- 
nezer Zane blazed this trail in 1796, from Wheeling, through what is now 
Lancaster in Ohio, to Maysville, Kentucky. Congress gave him the pre- 
emption right to three tracts of lands for his service in making the road, 
one of which he located in Lancaster. By 1797 many settlers were at- 
tracted from both north and south by the advantages which the path 
offered, and betook themselves and their families to Ohio. See Howe, 
Hut. Coll. of Ohio, ii, 328. 

2 N. B. Northrup, Pioneer Hist, of Medina County, 7. Its settlement 
was begun in 1811-12, but the war checked the accession of newcomers 
till 1814. Some of the pioneers of 1811 were from Ira, Vermont, Litch- 
field County, Connecticut, and Southbnry, Connecticut. Other families 
came in 1816 from Vermont. See ibid., 32, 88, 95, 125, 212. 



Loa^itmle "VTest 



from Greenwich 




THE PLANTING OF A SECOND NEW ENGLAND 183 

in consequence of the war as well as of a succession of 
poor seasons for agriculture. The debtor class had in- 
creased greatly, and many persons who had been fairly 
prosperous in Jefferson's day found themselves beggared 
and forced to begin life anew. The years 1815 and 
1816 saw hundreds of families setting off for the Ohio 
and Kentucky country, afflicted (so the newspapers of 
Maine asserted) with " the Ohio fever." ^ Stimulated by 
the reports of returning settlers and travelers, emigrants 
hastened again into the wilderness, pushing the frontier 
line out to the Mississippi. The sales of public lands 
were greatly increased up to 1819, when the panic of 
that year caused a decline temporarily ; from 1822 on, 
the sales again increased, the speculations reaching a 
climax just before the panic of 1837. The abandonment 
by the government of the credit system of sales in 1821 
probably affected the New England emigrants but little, 
for they were accustomed to pay for their lands at once, 
and to make improvements with their remaining capital. 
From 1814 until 1837 a ceaseless stream of pioneers took 
their way from the coast, by lake, river, road, and trail, 
to people the prairie lands of the Northwest Territory. 
After the Peace of Ghent in 1815, Ohio developed 
more rapidly than before, but along the lines determined 
before the war, — to the north and west on a New Eng-- 
land foundation, to the south on Virginia-New-Jersey- 
New-England lines, while all these elements met in the 
centre, with Pennsylvanians and New Yorkers added. 
Timothy Flint, writing in 1828,^ saw an essential dis- 

* Williamson, Maine, ii, 664, 665. 

» Timothy Flint, Geography and History of the Western States, ii,350, 351. 



184 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

tinction between the different parts of the state, al- 
though he admitted that the history of one log cabin 
and one clearing was substantially that of "an hundred 
thousand." The emigrants from the Northern and 
Middle States he found were mostly young people, re- 
cently married, with caution so ingrained that they 
rarely moved into the newer lands without having first 
investigated the proposed site, either in person, or by 
some trusted agent. Very infrequently did such im- 
migrants take flocks and herds farther than into the 
eastern or southern counties of Ohio, but a load of 
furniture, a gun, and a dog comprised the equipment of 
hundreds. Flint estimated that his description applied to 
three-fourths of the ingoing settlers of Ohio and Indiana. 
The Southerners he found were mostly middle-aged, 
with families, and frequently "large establishments" of 
flocks, herds, swine, horses, and slaves. Each pioneer 
sought land like that which he had known in his old 
home to be most productive. The uplands, which are 
now known to be more fertile than any other regions of 
Ohio, were an unknown quantity to any of the first 
settlers; they were suspicious of the spacious prairies 
which are the distinguishing feature of the Mississippi 
Valley. Therefore the first comers here, like their fellow 
emigrants who moved later to Illinois and Indiana, chose 
the bottom or valley lands, and avoided the tracts which 
now produce most abundantly the staple cereals of that 
region.* 

The Western Reserve filled up rapidly with Connecti- 
cut people, who not only gave old names to new homes, 

* H. S. Knapp, Ashland County, 24. 



THE PLANTING OF A SECOND NEW ENGLAND 185 

but also the distinct character of their earlier abode. 
Flint found there a large and compact population, dis- 
tinct from any other in Ohio, and noted especially the 
" equal dispersion of farms over the surface," the ten- 
dency to support schools and churches, — "exceedingly 
like the parent people from which they sprung." ^ The 
Connecticut settlers of Medina County who had been 
used to making dairying a prominent feature of their 
farming, introduced it very early ; in 1847 a native of 
Vermont began the industry on a large scale, and it has 
been a chief source of revenue to the county ever since. 
Agricultural societies, to which the settlers had been 
used at home, "in the East," grew up here quite as 
a matter of course. By 1833 the people who had be- 
fore met rather informally to show the best cattle and 
products and compare their merits, had begun to have 
such societies intermittently; the permanent organiza- 
tion dates from 1845.^ 

Oberlin, in Lorain County, deserves more than pass- 
ing mention. In 1833, when the site of the future town 
was still a wilderness, a tract three miles square was 
secured, very level, with a rather stiff clay soil, covered 
with beech and maple trees. Here a number of famihes, 

* Timothy Flint, Geography and History of the Western States, ii, 362. 
Note the names of towns in northern Ohio, — New Lyme, Orwell, Cole- 
brook, Windsor, Farmington, Newton, Northfield, Amherst, New Haven, 
Andover, Hartford, and many more which call to mind their New Eng- 
land prototypes. 

" Perrin, Battle, and Goodspeed (compilers), Hist, of Medina County, 
206-210. No author is assigned for this article. It is not certain that the 
Southerners did not introduce county fairs as early as the New England- 
ers did. The subject ought to be investigated, for the movement is an 
interesting and profitable one. 



186 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

mostly from New England, "witli a few from New York 
and northeastern Ohio, gathered to plant a town, a 
church, and a college, with homes for themselves and 
their children. Rev. John Shipherd, born in New York, 
but a Vermonter by training, and his friend Philo 
Stewart, also reared in Vermont, but born in Connecti- 
cut, were the leaders in this movement, which was 
designed especially to be a missionary enterprise to im- 
press itself upon the surrounding country, and train 
laborers to work in lands across the ocean for the 
Christian cause. Mr. Stewart was especially anxious 
that a school be founded where study and labor might 
be combined : where students might defray their ex- 
penses by manual labor, and yet keep on with their 
studies. He had been educated in the academy of Paw- 
let, Vermont, where he had studied and worked in odd 
moments in his uncle's shop. In that academy, too, 
young men and young women had worked and studied 
side by side ; his school must, then, include manual 
training and coeducation.^ 

Having secured the land from its New Haven owners, 
together with a five-hundred-acre tract for a " Manual 
Labor School," Mr. Shipherd gathered together colo- 
nists, who were all asked to subscribe to a covenant 
which had been drawn up. Here the settlers vowed 
themselves to a life of simplicity, to especial devotion 
to church and school, and to earnest labor in the mis- 
sionary cause. All were Whigs, feeling it "almost as 
necessary to be Whigs as to be Christians." ^ Their early 
political affiliations did not prevent them later from 

' J. H. Fairchild, Oberlin, 9-16. » Ibid., 109. 



THE PLANTING OF A SECOND NEW ENGLAND 187 

being thoroughgoing abolitionists ; they voted with the 
Liberty party in 1840 and 1844, with the Freesoilers in 
1848, and ever after 1854 with the Republicans. 

Nor were the Oberlin settlers content with one mis- 
sionary enterprise ; Olivet College in Michigan, founded 
in 1844, is a child of Oberlin, as is Tabor College, 
founded in 1851 in Iowa. Oberlin graduates helped to 
build Hinsdale College in Michigan ; Ripon College in 
Wisconsin ; Iowa College in Grinnell, Iowa ; Drury 
College in Springfield, Missouri ; and Carleton College 
in Northfield, Minnesota. President Fairchild says that 
the impulse of a new college, growing from small be- 
ginnings, has seemed to impress many Oberlin students, 
and they have gone forth with the thought of under- 
taking a similar enterprise. He believes that such an 
impulse would hardly be a factor among the students 
of an old, solidly established college. " It comes when 
college-building is a part of the education." * 

The church at Oberlin was organized in 1834, with 
sixty-two members; its confession of faith was of the 
New England Calvinistic type, but the church neverthe- 
less connected itself with the Cleveland Presbytery, 
under the " Plan of Union " already familiar to stu- 
dents of New York church history. The same plan was 
followed by practically all the early settlers of the 
Western Reserve, whose churches, while Congregational 
in their constitution and confession, maintained their 

* Ibid., 152, 153. John Brown's father was a trustee of Oberlin as early 
as 1835, and his younger brothers and sisters were students here, while 
Brown himself helped survey some of the college lands in West Virginia. 
Ibid., 157. 



188 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

outward fellowship through connection with some pres- 
bytery. The Congregational Church of Granville, which 
had been organized in Granville, Massachusetts, and 
had been transplanted with the settlers, had become 
involved in a church quarrel, which led in 1827 to the 
division of the old church into two Presbyterian con- 
gregations, while the Congregational Church continued 
its own existence with a remnant of its former member- 
ship. A little later an Episcopal church was the result 
of another quarrel. In about a year after their division, 
the two Presbyterian churches and the Congregational 
one reunited under a " Plan of Union," and joined the 
Licking County conference because the church was iso- 
lated in Christian fellowship. This church also became 
a practically total abstinence organization, for after 1831 
it admitted no one who " drank, bought, sold, or 
manufactured ardent spirits, except for medicinal or 
mechanical purposes." * 

When Ohio was admitted as a state, one condition 
was made which formed a precedent followed by most 
states ever since. In every township one whole section 
was to be set apart for the support of schools; — in 
this state, as in most others, section sixteen of each 
township was so reserved.^ Thus the government put 
itself on record as the advocate of public education, and 
a precedent was established which has given character 
not only to the states admitted after 1803, but to the 
whole nation as well. 

^ Rev. Henry Buslinell, Granville, Ohio, 130, 210, 213. 
' Beginning with the admission of Wisconsin in 1848, section 36 has 
been reserved as well as section 16. 



THE PLANTING OF A SECOND NEW ENGLAND 189 

Although provision was made thus early for Ohio 
schools, nevertheless, all education before 1821 was 
purely voluntary, no public school system having been 
evolved. The legislature simply authorized the forma- 
tion of school companies, and passed some regulations 
as to the universities of Oxford and Miami. In 1821, 
however, a recommendatory law was passed providing 
for the support of common schools ; four years later 
the law was changed to a compulsory statute, the alter- 
ation being largely the work of Judge Ephraim Cutler, 
a member of the state legislature sent by constituents in 
the Western Reserve. Harvey Rice, born in Conway, 
Massachusetts, who had moved to Cleveland in 1824, 
was in 1851 made chairman of the committee on schools 
in the State Senate, and here he prepared and intro- 
duced a bill organizing the common school system of 
Ohio as it is to-day.^ 

With the story of the founding of Yale College and 
of Dartmouth in mind, it would be surprising not to 
find in its early history an institution of higher learn- 
ing in northern Ohio. Western Reserve College, char- 
tered in 1826, was modeled after Yale, both in its course 
of study and in the organization of its governing board, 
where the majority was to be made up of clergymen 
in both cases. In the beginning this majority had four 
out of seven men from Yale. Its first president was 
Dr. George E. Pierce, a graduate of the New Haven 
institution in 1816, who was said to have been thor- 
oughly imbued with the Connecticut idea of a college. 

> " Autobiography of Harvey Rice," in Annals of the Early Settlers* 
Association of Cuyahoga County, iii, 34-39. 



190 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

Most of his faculty were Yale men, and for years the 
new college followed the lines of the old in every detail 
of its organization, administration, and courses of study. 
It has been from the first a practice for Yale and West- 
ern Reserve to have from time to time what one may 
almost call an interchange of instructors, for Yale 
graduates teach in the western college and graduates 
of Western Reserve are called to Yale, to help in carry- 
ing out the work of their own college's Alma Mater. 
Thus the two colleges have kept in closest touch with 
one another, — the old Yale in the old Connecticut, the 
new Yale in Connecticut's Western Reserve.^ 

In the matter of town and county organization, Ohio 
shows a development related more nearly to New York 
than it is to either New England or Virginia. It was 
but natural that a state in which the population was so 
mixed as it was in Ohio should adopt a compromise 
between the Virginia county and the New England 
town ; the New York system showed a middle way 
which would preserve both organizations in harmony. 
Moreover, the counties of Ohio were erected in advance 
of any settlement save that of the most haphazard and 
isolated sort ; only after the people had made very con- 
siderable headway in taking up lands and planting 
towns was any other civil administration required than 
that afforded by the county organization. 

The county organization was in 1831 based upon the 
election of three county commissioners,^ whose term was 

1 For the close connection between the two colleges, see Dr. Northrup, 
" Yale In its Relation to the Development of the Country," in the Record 
of the Bicentennial Celebration of Yale University, 307-309. 

'Laws of Ohio, 1831, 44, 267-280, 315, 316, 344, 413, 484, 485. 



THE PLANTING OF A SECOND NEW ENGLAND 191 

three years, and who held annual sessions. These com- 
missioners were to erect in their county a courthouse, 
of which the county sheriff was to have charge, and a 
poorhouse, for whose oversight they appointed three 
directors; besides these duties, they were to examine 
county accounts, administer oaths, etc. To these officers 
was intrusted the matter of erecting townships, and 
calling for the election of township officers, — three 
trustees, a clerk, two overseers of the poor, a treasurer, 
three fence viewers, a constable, and supervisors of 
highways. The township trustees have charge of the 
work of laying off school districts; the electors then 
choose the school officers. By the county judges of the 
court of common pleas is determined the number of 
justices of the peace for each township ; when this num- 
ber is settled upon, the electors choose them. The 
county government comprises, besides the commissioners 
and judges already mentioned, an assessor, prosecuting 
attorney, auditor, recorder, treasurer, sheriff, and coroner. 
There are, therefore, the two complete local administra- 
tive and judicial bodies, the county taking precedence of 
the township, which is subordinate to it, as the county is 
subordinate to the state. The matter of roads shows the 
same administrative divisions, for there are state roads, 
with their own commissioners; county roads, with their 
own viewers and surveyors ; and township roads, with 
their own officers. Thus the development, while not 
deviating far from the New York pattern, has not fol- 
lowed exactly the New England system, which it never- 
theless recalls. 

Enough has been said to show the nature of Ohio 



192 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

settlement. A frontier built by New Englanders at the 
North joined one constructed by Southerners, New Jer- 
sey men and their neighbors from the South, till the 
whole state, save only the Western Reserve and such 
localities as Granville and Marietta, had assumed a com- 
posite character which differentiated it from any of the 
old states. Yet New England tradition had been im- 
pressed upon Ohio ; it had crystallized in the New Con- 
necticut, and reproduced itself in Granville. Into the 
new West the school, the church, and the town-meeting 
had been carried ; they were changed, for here, as in 
New York, the man from Massachusetts or Connecticut 
had been forced to compromise with his neighbor from 
Pennsylvania or Virginia whose ideas of institutions 
differed from those of the Puritan. But the change had 
not concealed the original type, nor obscured the ideal 
which lay at the foundations of all three institutions.^ 

* See maps opposite pages 206, 210, 236, 246. 

Professor Chamberlain, of Vassar College, has drawn the author's atten- 
tion to a little volume by Rev. Josiah Strong, entitled Our Country, pub- 
lished about 1885 by the American Home Missionary Society (New York, 
n. d.). Dr. Strong, on pages 145 and 146 of that volume, gives a curious 
story of two adjoining townships in the Western Reserve. One was 
founded by a home missionary with high ideals, who drew about him a 
selected body of settlers. At the centre of the township, where eight 
roads met, was set a church, and soon afterward " followed the school- 
house and the public library," with an academy a little later on. In this 
township (which Dr. Strong does not name, but which has been identified 
as Talmadge township of Summit County) was opened the first school for 
the deaf in Ohio. 

The other township (not named by Dr. Strong, but identified as Stow 
township in Summit County) was first settled by an infidel who " ex- 
pressed the desire that there might never be a Christian Church in the 
township." Dr. Strong says that to his knowledge there has never been 
one. He then draws inferences distinctly unfavorable to Stow township. 



THE PLANTING OF A SECOND NEW ENGLAND 193 

By 1840 Ohio's vacant land was all occupied, and 
the state had passed out of the pioneer stage; it had 
no longer a frontier, it had ceased to be the "far west," 
for that ever receding region had moved on to Illinois 
and the lands beyond the Mississippi. The population 
had become comparatively dense ; as the number of in- 
habitants increased, the whole state became more homo- 
geneous, and New Englanders were found everywhere, 
side by side with New York men, families from Penn- 
sylvania, and settlers from Virginia. Cincinnati had in 
184:1 representatives of many states, besides a large per- 
centage of immigrants of foreign birth. ^ The census of 
1850 showed that 23,000 of Ohio's people had emi- 
grated from Connecticut, 19,000 from Massachusetts, 
14,000 from Vermont, 84,000 from New York, and 

* A population including 12,292 males was made up as follows (ex- 
cluding 46 per cent of foreigners ; only 54 per cent were of American 
birth, — a significant fact to be noted when one recalls the large German 
element in Cincinnati's population to-day) : — 

Pennsylvania 1210 

Ohio 1112 

New Jersey 795 

New York 672 

Virginia 619 

Maryland 637 

Massachusetts 414 

Kentucky 349 

Connecticut 230 

Vermont 118 

Maine 96 

Delaware 90 

New Hampshire 70 

Rhode Island 62 

(The rest scattering) 
See Charles Cist, Cincinnati in I84I, 38, 39. 



194 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

9000 from Maine, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire. 
A decade later, the proportions had changed, though 
Ohio still counted 53,000 New England born men and 
women among her inhabitants. The emigrants from the 
coast had aided not a little in the labor of building a 
new state; by 1860 their sons and daughters had joined 
a host of other pioneers from New England to repeat 
the work their fathers had done, this time upon a new 
frontier far across the Mississippi, beyond the Rocky 
Mountains. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 

Here, as in all the preceding chapters, many more sources of informa- 
tiou have gone into the preparation of the maps illustrating the text than 
can be cited in the footnotes or enumerated here. The most careful work 
on Ohio local history has been done in the New England centres, where 
the self-consciousness of the settlers has tended to full records of their 
life, as it had done in the case of their ancestors. 

A good starting-point is Henry Howe's Historical Collections of Ohio, 
new edition, 2 vols., 1904. The Annals of the " Cuyahoga County Early 
Settlers' Association " (3 vols.) is distinctly like the work of Massachu- 
setts historians. The State Archseological and Historical Society has 
thirteen volumes of Publications which are very good. Two county his- 
tories for which no person assumes the responsibility as editor or compiler 
are, nevertheless, of some value : The History of Portage County, Ohio 
(Chicago, 1885), and The History of Medina County and Ohio (Chicago, 
1881). N. B. Northrup also has a good Pioneer History of Medina County 
(Medina, 1861). H. N. Hill, Jr., has compiled a. History of Licking County 
(Newark, Ohio, 1881) ; H. S. Knapp has done a good piece of work in 
compiling A History of the Pioneer and Modem Times of Ashland County 
(Philadelphia, 1863). Alfred Mathews's Ohio and her Western Reserve is 
a rather popular study, but suggestive for the work of New Englanders 
in Ohio. James McBride has a Pioneer Biography (sketches of the lives of 
early settlers in Butler County) in two volumes, which is a good piece of 
work. Dr. S. P. Hildreth's Biographical and Historical Memoirs of the 
Early Pioneer Settlers of Ohio gives an excellent idea of Marietta, its set- 



THE PLANTING OF A SECOND NEW ENGLAND 195 

tiers, and its institutions. Rev. Henry Bushnell's History of Granville and 
President James Fairchild's Oberlin are indispensable, and the standard 
for their towns. Rev. Dr. C. E. Dickinson's Century of Church Life gives 
the history of the Marietta church founded by the pioneers. Charles Cist 
has a good volume on Cincinnati in I84I. 

The Laws of Ohio (Columbus, 1831) are the source for the town and 
county system. 

The work of Timothy Flint which is referred to in the text is A Con- 
densed Geography and History of the Western States (2 vols., Cincinnati, 
1828), — a storehouse of information. J. H. Perkins's Annals of the West 
(Cincinnati, 1846) is full of anecdotes for Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. 
Jacob Burnet, in Notes on the Early Settlement of the Northwestern Territory 
(New York, 1847), makes many shrewd comments on the character of 
early settlers. J. M. Peck's Guide for Emigrants (Boston, 1831) is very 
suggestive. Professor B. A. Hinsdale's Old Northwest is still of value. 

Professor A. B. Hulbert's work. Historic Highways (16 vols.), referred 
to in this chapter, supplements with much detail the very general state- 
ments made in this chapter on routes to Ohio from the east, as do Dr. 
R. G. Thwaites's collections in 32 vols., — Early Western Travels. 

The New England Magazine (New Series, 1889-1908) has a number 
of articles of varying excellence, which gives information of New Eng- 
landers in the West. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE JOINING OF TWO FRONTIERS : INDIANA AND ILLINOIS 

1809-1865 

The census of 1800 gave Illinois two hundred and 
fifteen inhabitants, and Indiana about the same number. 
These inhabitants were either the French at Vincennes, 
and at the forts upon the Mississippi and the Ohio, or 
the few trappers and hunters of the Daniel Boone type 
who had crossed the river from Kentucky or Virginia. 
Between the beginning of the nineteenth century and 
the opening of hostilities in 1812, the population had 
increased about the three centres, — Vincennes and the 
two forts, — but the two territories were still, to all intents 
and purposes, a wilderness. Yet here and there among the 
forerunners of incoming settlement might even then be 
found a venturesome New Englander. In 1805 a native 
of Connecticut who had tried frontier life in Kentucky 
pushed with his family into the woods of Gibson County, 
Indiana;^ and Joshua Atwater, born in Westfield, 
Massachusetts, took his "New England habits and 
education " with him to Madison County, Illinois, where 
he taught school, and founded in 1809 what was prob- 
ably the first charitable institution in that territory.^ 
But such cases were the exceptional ones ; men like 
these formed only the vanguard of the advancing army 

1 J. T. Tarte, compiler, Hist, of Gibson County, 55. See map opposite 
page 182. 

^ J. T. Hair, compiler, Gazetteer of Madison County, 136, n. 



INDIANA AND ILLINOIS 197 

o£ those settlers, who, once the treaty of Ghent had 
opened the way, resumed their march westward and 
passed beyond the confines of Ohio to the prairies and 
woods of Indiana and lUinois. Indiana, however, never 
received any large accession of New En glanders; the 
typical " Hoosier" of to-day is far more like a Kentuckian 
or a Carolinian than he is like a New Yorker or a man 
from the Bay State. In Illinois the Puritan element is 
found chiefly in the northern third of the state. The 
history of settlement in both regions is, however, the 
history of a frontier pushed north by Southerners, and 
of settlement by Puritan stock working down from the 
North toward the centre, where both met and strove for 
supremacy in state councils. 

Throughout the territorial period there was " nothing 
like a New England town " in Indiana,^ nor was there 
any appreciable number of New England settlers. The 
tide from the East was up to 1816 flowing into western 
New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio; and although 
southern Indiana was filling up with farms and towns, 
the new population was chiefly from Kentucky, Ten- 

1 Introduction to the Executive Journal of Indiana Territory, 78. (In 
Indiana State Hist. Sac. Pub., vol. iii).. There were, however, at least 
two attempts to plant such towns. In thfe Annals of Congress, 1804 - 05, 
page 872, is a petition of Benjamin Strong of Vermont, for a tract of 
land six miles square in Indiana Territory for a colony. In the State Papers, 
vol. i on Public Lan'S.s, page 288, is a petition of December 180C, from 
inhabitants of Ovid, New York, for the privilege of purchasing a whole 
township " on the White River, or Wabash," in Indiana territory. They 
make this request " that by their compact settlement thereon, they may 
be the better able to aid each other in the support of schools and religion. " 
Ovid was settled 1790-91 and the succeeding years by emigrants from 
New Jersey, " Pennsylvania on the New Jersey line," New Englanders, 
and eastern New Yorkers. Hotchkin, Western New York, 392. 



198 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

nessee, or the Southern States along the Atlantic coast. 
The territorial offices had been filled almost without 
exception by Virginians, but with the coming of state- 
hood new elements entered, and the Southerners were 
no longer in control. The extremely cold seasons of 
1816-17 were responsible for the failure of crops in 
the East, and many farmers from western New York 
and northwestern Pennsylvania built large boats upon 
which they moved their families and household goods 
down the Ohio River into the southeastern part of 
Indiana, — into Dearborn, Jennings, Switzerland, and 
Washington counties. Here they generally formed 
neighborhood settlements. During the years between 
1816 and 1820 Pennsylvanians usually held the rudder 
politically, aided here and there by a " stray Yankee." ^ 
These newcomers were not, on the whole, pure New 
England stock, nor had they moved directly from that 
section, but they brought the " Yankee " axe, with the 
crooked helve; they used oxen for rolling logs, and 
they built tlieir cabins square, not oblong with the 
chimney in one end, making a fifth corner like the let- 
ter "V," as in the Virginia and Kentucky style of 
frontier architecture. While the Kentuckians built only 
rude horse-mills, these "Yankees" erected water-mills on 
the streams. Although the acute economic distress had 
been the directly impelling motive for their emigration, 
the remark of one who had been elected a judge in In- 
diana at this time, and was on a visit to his old home, 
doubtless voiced the secret aspiration of many an ambi- 

1 Rev. Dr. Wood, in Rev. F. C. Holliday's Indiana Methodism, 90, 91. 
Dr. Wood was a circuit-rider and preacher in Indiana in its early days. 



INDIANA AND ILLINOIS 199 

tlous young Eastern man, when he said: "Do you 
think I would stay here and be a common man, when 
I can go there and he ajicdge f " * 

Gradually, beginning after the panic of 1819, the 
New England emigrants filtered into the towns and 
counties of Indiana. A family from Brattleboro, Ver- 
mont, came in 1820 ; Calvin Fletcher from Ludlow in 
the same state, the following year; one of the early 
settlers of Cass County came in 1826 from his birth- 
place. New Canaan, Connecticut; one of the first phy- 
sicians in southeastern Indiana came in 1821 from Mas- 
sachusetts. One reads sketches of many men of New 
England birth who came in these early days from Ohio 
and New York, where they had lived for a few years, 
and at this period moved on to cheaper land. A more 
roundabout emigration resulted in opening up Wayne 
and Randolph counties, which in an early day showed 
some features of Puritan origin, brought in by Quakers 
of Nantucket descent, with others who had come of 
Cape Cod and Pennsylvania stock. They removed either 
from Guilford County (and the adjoining counties of 
Rockland, Chatham, and Rockingham) in North Caro- 
lina; or the eastern counties of Blount, Sevier, Greene, 
and Jefferson, in Tennessee. But they all brought 
strong prejudices against slavery, and maintained them 
in the midst of neighbors who sympathized with the 
South.' 

» Ibid., 91. 

^ See map opposite. 

E. Tucker, Hist, of Randolph County, Indiana, 82, 462 ; and Levi 
Coffin, Reminiscences, 4, 6, 11. Here are the families of Coffin, Starbuck, 
and Swain, all of whom were descendants of the Nantucket Quakers who 



200 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

The great influx of New England settlement came in 
1830 and the years succeeding that date. Families came 
either singly, or in groups of two or three households, 
most of them between 1830 and 1837, settling the 
northern tier of counties from Steuben on the eastern 
border to Lake on the Illinois boundary ; ^ going in 
smaller numbers to the second tier ; ^ and only here and 

removed to Guilford County, 1770-76. Also J. H. Wheeler, North 
Carolina, ii, 170 ; and A. W. Young, Wayne County (Indiana), 29, 30, 98. 
1 See Hist, of Steuben County, 423-819. Also Hist, of DeKalb County, 
540-864 ; Counties of Lagrange and Noble, 315-426, 429-477. Almost all 
the sketches of settlers in both these counties show men of Connecticut or 
of Vermont birth, with some from Massachusetts, and fewer still from 
New Hampshire. In the Hist, of Elkhart County, 362-364, is given a list 
of 300 members of the Pioneers' Association, who came between 1828 and 
1840. They are classified as to nativity as follows : — 

Ohio 102 

New York 46 

Indiana 33 

Pennsylvania 32 

Virginia 19 

Maryland 5 

Kentucky 3 

Connecticut , 3 

Vermont 3 

New Jersey 2 

Tennessee 2 

Rhode Island 

New Hampshire 

Maine 

North Carolina 

South Carolina 

A large emigration came from Orange County, New York, 1832^0 ; 
many of these emigrants were of New England stock, as was the author's 
grandfather, who moved with these emigrants in 1837 and settled at Mid- 
dlebury in this county. See also Hist of St. Joseph County, 375 ff. 

' Hist, of Allen County, 124, 157 ; Goodspeed and Blanchard, Counties of 
Whitley and Noble, 164^309 ; 326-477. 



INDIANA AND ILLINOIS 201 

there into the third.* To the south, some few drifted 
in and around the Quakers of Richmond and Wayne 
County ; ^ others may be traced in the southeastern cor- 
ner/ and in Evansville/ In the central portion of the 
state, very few came in the early years ; ° but in Indian- 
apolis there is to-day a " New England Society " made 
up of those emigrants who were born in the New 
England States. 

Certain counties came gradually during these years 
to be known as New England counties. These lay in 
general along the northern border, dipping south on 
the eastern boundary, with scattered families in the cen- 
tre. La Grange County, in the northeastern part of the 
state, will illustrate the point. The leading spirit for 
many years in the town of Wolcottville was one George 
Wolcott, born in Torrington, Connecticut, who came to 
Indiana in 1837. Old settlers whose lives are woven 
into the history of the county came from such Massa- 
chusetts counties as Worcester, Berkshire, and Suffolk ; 
from Connecticut counties, — Hartford, Windham, — 
and towns like Sherman, Lebanon, and Fairfield ; from 
Vermont, — Burlington, Brookfield, Huntington, and 
Grand Isle. Noble County had a similar heterogeneous 
collection of pioneers. La Porte County drew its early 

1 T. B. Helm (ed.), Hist, of Cass County, 493-494, 529, 545-548. 

^ A. W. Young, Wayne County, 188-412. There is a sketch of a New 
Englander here and there. 

8 Hist, of Dearborn, Ohio, and Switzerland Counties, 149-150, 167-173, 
560-605, 1185-1237. These settlers came in from 1814 to 1825. 

* White, Evansville, 14, 15, 37, 75, 76, 317-340. Several of these came 
in "between 1850 and 1860. 

« Counties of White and Pulaski, 223-318. Also J. H. Nowland, Sketches 
of Prominent Citizens ^of Indianapolis'], 152-292. 



202 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

settlers from Massachusetts towns, — Granville, Bos- 
ton, Bridgewater, and West Bridgewater, Andover, 
Nantucket Island, and Hampshire County ; from Con- 
necticut, — Colchester, Wethersfield, Granby, and New 
Haven ; from Maine, — Penobscot County, especially ; 
from New Hampshire, — Bradford, Amherst, Goffstown ; 
from Vermont, — Orange and Caledonia counties, the 
villages of Dorset, Fairfax, and Albany. 

There were also New England towns, though such 
compact settlements were on the whole rare in Indiana. 
In Steuben County the Vermont settlement at Orland 
was widely known as a centre of Whig and Free-Soil 
politicians. Settled in 1834, after John Stocker had 
gone prospecting for his own and his neighbors' fami- 
lies, and had chosen this county because of the rich burr- 
oak openings he found, the pioneers from Windham 
County, Vermont, organized their Baptist church the 
next year, and before long had laid plans for the " Or- 
land Academy." ^ The " New Hampshire settlement " 
on Lake Prairie in Lake County was such a compact 
town which dated from 1855. The next year the fami- 
lies living there established a church and a school, and 
the town of Lowell perpetuated - the traditions thus 
established in a prairie village.^ 

The biographies of a few typical pioneers will illus- 
trate the transplanting of the New England man to 
Indiana. Calvin Fletcher of Ludlow, Vermont, state 
attorney, later state senator, was appointed by the leg- 
islature in 1834 to help organize a state bank and to 

1 Hist, of Steuben County, 314, 455-492. 

2 Rev. T. H. Ball, Lake County, Indiana, 1834 to 1872, 99. 



INDIANA AND ILLINOIS 203 

act as sinking-fund commissioner ; he was always inter- 
ested in agricultural societies, was an anti-slavery man 
" on principle," and for many years a trustee of the 
Indianapolis schools/ James Whitcomb, born in Wind- 
sor, Vermont, was taken to Ohio as a boy, and lived 
there until he moved to Bloomington, Indiana, at the 
age of twenty-seven. Made governor in 1843, when the 
state was loaded down with a debt upon which not even 
the interest had been paid for years, he had at the end 
of six years adjusted the outstanding obhgations so that 
the state's credit was restored.^ By his efforts public sen- 
timent in favor of reformatory and benevolent institu- 
tions was created. A third illustration is John Comstock 
of Greenwich, Rhode Island, who was in public life for 
many years after his arrival in 1836, and was one of those 
upon whose generosity the " war governor " of Indiana 
relied to help fill a treasury depleted by a divided state.' 
An incident from Lake County history shows the New 
England perseverance in gaining what the people of 
that section regarded as their rights, organizing and 
combining to secure and preserve them. The settlers of 
Lake County, squatters upon unsold lands, were waiting 
for the passage by Congress of a preemption law which 
would insure them their homes. John Robinson, a native 
of Connecticut, called a meeting at his house on the 
Fourth of July, 1836, where he was appointed one of 

» W. W. Woollen, Biog. and Hist. Sketches of Early Indiana, 464-466. 

^ Ibid., 81-83. He did this by securing the passage of the Butler Bill, 
whereby one half the debt was paid through the transfer of the Wabash 
and Erie Canal, and the other half funded by the issuance of bonds bear- 
ing a low rate of interest. 

» Hist, of Wabash County, 286, 287. 



204 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

a committee to draft a constitution for a " Squatters' 
Union," and was made one of a board of three arbitra- 
tors of claims under this constitution. It was declared 
that actual settlers ought to have their lands at $1,25 
per acre, and not be deprived of them or compelled to 
pay a higher price by reason of speculation ; that if 
Congress did not protect the settlers, they would them- 
selves take " such measures as may he necessary " to 
secure one another in their just claims. Therefore a 
board of arbitrators and a registrar of claims was pro- 
vided for, each township in the county to have such an 
arrangement if it so desired. Each signer was to use his 
influence to get his friends and acquaintances to join the 
settlement, " under the full assurance that we shall now 
obtain our rights, and that it is now perfectly as safe to 
go on improving the public land as though we already 
had our titles from government." ^ 

Upon the whole, Indiana has been influenced more 
from the South than from New England. Yet the free 
school system was the work chiefly of a teacher in 
Wabash College, — Professor Caleb Mills, a graduate of 
Dartmouth College. In 1846 he prepared his first ad- 
dress to the state legislature, a plea for a public school 
system for Indiana. The interest which it aroused from 
the moment a copy was laid upon the desk of every 
member of the legislature was increased by an address 
prepared for each session up to 1851. Another paper 
was placed before the constitutional convention of 1850 
by Professor Mills, signed, as the others had been, by 

» Rev. T. H. Ball, Lake County, 41^8, 277. Robinson was called " The 
Squatter King of Lake." 



INDIANA AND ILLINOIS 205 

" One of the People." The state legislature had five 
thousand copies of one of the addresses printed and 
distributed throughout the state. Finally the system 
was established, and when it was learned that Professor 
Mills was " One of the Peojjle," " the people he had so 
well served were quick to honor him by an unsought 
election to the office of state superintendent of public 
instruction." * 

Professor Mills's efforts were not confined to the pub- 
lic schools. He was the first head of Wabash College, 
which he built up on the lines of Dartmouth College and 
of Andover Academy, where he had been trained as a 
boy. His work was done shoulder to shoulder with his 
classmate from Andover and from Dartmouth, — E. 0. 
Hovey, for forty-four years a trustee of Wabash College.^ 

All through northern Indiana the Congregational 
Church has its representatives, or the Presbyterian Church 
to which, as in Ohio and New York, many of those who 
had been Congregationalists turned because of its larger 
organization. The first Congregational church in Ko- 
komo was founded in 1863 by the members of a New 
England family. Plymouth church, in Indianapolis, has 
always had a large membership of New England descent. 

It was to an early settler of Dearborn County, who 

* J. M. Butler, in Reunion of the New England Society of Indianapolis 
in 1894, 38, 39. See, also, Dr. W. A. Rawles, Centralizing Tendencies in 
the Administration of Indiana, Columbia University, " Studies in History, 
Economics, and Public Law," vol. xvii, no. 1; also Dr. F, T. Carlton, 
Economic Influences upon Educational Progress in the United States, 1820 
to 1850, in the " Economics and Political Science Series, Bulletins of the 
University of Wisconsin," vol. iv, no. 1. For Indiana settlement in 1820, 
1830, and 1840, see maps opposite pages 206, 210, and 236. 

* Rev. J. F. Tattle, in Hist, of Montgomery County, 156. 



206 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

was born in Mansfield, Connecticut, had lived in Ver- 
mont, and came to southeastern Indiana to make his 
home, that Indiana owes its township system. About 
1822 this pioneer secured its adoption as a system local 
to his own county ; but so ingrained had its advantages 
become in the minds of Dearborn County people, that 
nearly thirty years later a member of the state legisla- 
ture from that very county introduced the bill extend- 
ing the system (modified, to be sure) to all the counties 
of the state/ As one might expect, however, the town- 
ship is distinctly subordinated to the county, — more so 
than is the case in states like New York or Ohio, where 
Puritan influence was stronger than in Indiana. 

The settlement of Illinois presents many features in 
common with that of its neighbor, Indiana. Settlers had 
worked up into Illinois from the South before 1812, as 
has been said; in 1818, when the territory became a 
state, only the southern half had as yet been occupied, 
and that portion wholly by representatives of Virginia, 
Kentucky, and the Carolinas, whose influence domi- 
nated the territorial stage. Here and there a New Eng- 
land family might be found, as at Collinsville (Madison 
County), opposite St. Louis, where the three Collins 
brothers, from Litchfield, Connecticut, established them- 
selves in 1817.^ They used the same horse-power for a 
distillery and a sawmill, ran a cooper shop, a blacksmith 
shop, a wagon shop, and a carpenter shop, besides ware- 
houses both in Collinsville and at St. Louis. They were 
not wholly engrossed in money-getting, however ; they, 

* Hist, of Dearborn, Ohio, and Switzerland Counties, 149, 150. 
" See map opposite. 



Lou.'itu'le We^t i^G from Orecnwich fto 



New England Settlement 

in 

Ohio. Indiana and l.'<inois 
1820 

I [ New England Scltle nent, 
\:>a:\ All other Settlement. 




INDIANA AND ILLINOIS 207 

•with their neighbors, built in 1818 a union meeting- 
house, which was used for the public school during the 
week, and for a Sunday school after church service. 
When the father of these men came in 1824, he made 
the first substantial subscription for Illinois College.* 
One of the first three settlers in Quincy, Adams County, 
came about 1823 from Newfane, Vermont, by way of 
** Canada and the Northern lakes." His reason for emi- 
grating he gives in his diary : " [I was] impelled by 
curiosity and a desire to see other places than those in 
the vicinity of my native town."^ 

But such settlers were the exception in the early days 
of Illinois; Southerners were in the great majority, and 
in 1818 they shaped the state constitution along the 
lines of the " Old Dominion " and her neighbors.^ The 
first code of laws was a Southern code, mainly from the 
statute books of Kentucky and Virginia ; and every one 
of the first six governors was a Southern man; for 
twenty-five years the senators and representatives of the 
new state were almost without exception men born south 
of the Ohio.^ It was later that the fourteen northern 
counties, the New England stronghold, forced the town- 
ship system upon the rest of the state.^ The hostility 

* J. T. Hair, Gazetteer of Madison County, 145, 146. 
2 Asbury, Reminiscences, 25, 26. 

' Dr. Albert Shaw, Local Government in Illinois, 9. 

* H. L, Boies, Hist, of DeKalh County, 46 ; Greene, Government of Illi- 
nois, 36. 

* E. B. Greene, " Sectional Forces in the History of Illinois," in Trans, 
of III. Hist. Soc. for 1903, p. 80. Dr. W. V. Pooley has prepared an admir- 
able study on The Settlement of Illinois from 1830 to 1850, vol. i, no. 4 of 
the " History Series, Bulletins of the University of Wisconsin " (May, 
1908). It contains some accurate and suggestive maps. 



208 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

between the pioneers from the South and their rivals in 
state-building who came in by way of northern Indiana 
dated back, however, to the territorial days, when New 
England was for the most part represented by tricky 
itinerant clock-peddlers. The Southerners conceived the 
idea that a genuine " Yankee " was miserly, shrewd to 
the point of dishonesty, and absolutely lacking in kind- 
liness or hospitality towards his neighbors ; they retained 
this belief long after the peddler had departed and the 
substantial Puritan farmer had taken up an abode in a 
state where he meant to spend the rest of his days. The 
New Englanders, on their side, misunderstood their 
Southern neighbors, and confused them all with the 
"poor whites" who had contented themselves with the 
squatter's log cabin. Many of the Southerners, it is true, 
were poor; they had been unable to hold slaves in the 
South by reason of their poverty, and had come into 
the Northwest Territory not only to better their condi- 
tion, but also to avoid a system of which they did not 
disapprove on principle, but had found unpleasant on 
account of the social distinctions it produced. Others had 
turned their faces Illinois-ward, even after the passage 
of the Missouri Compromise ; but that measure diverted 
Southern emigration very markedly to the lands across 
the Missouri, leaving northern Illinois for the New 
Yorkers and New Englanders. Most of these later emi- 
grants were wealthy farmers, enterprising merchants, 
millers, and manufacturers, who built mills, churches, 
schoolhouses, cities, and made roads and bridges with 
astonishing public spirit ; so that the southern part of 
the state, though it was many years older in point of 



INDIANA AND ILLINOIS 209 

settlement, was noticeably behind in point of wealth 
and evidences of pubhc spirit and prosperity.* A strong 
sectional antagonism sprang up, due to the entire mis- 
understanding existing between the northern and the 
southern portions of the state. Southerners opposed the 
Illinois and Michigan Canal because of the fear that if 
completed it would "flood the state with Yankees";^ 
the Northerners resented the attempt to force them to 
help pay a heavy state debt which had been recklessly 
incurred before their arrival.^ 

This mutual lack of comprehension and consequent 
violent sectional antagonism came to a climax in 1840. 
In that year a mass-meeting was held at Rockford in 
Winnebago County (on the northern boundary), where 
one hundred and twenty delegates met, every one of 
whom had come from the counties lying north of a line 
drawn from the southern bend of Lake Michigan to the 
Mississippi River. This region had been added to Illinois 
in 1818, largely through the efforts of Nathaniel Pope ; 
the settlers felt themselves much more closely allied in 
their interests with Wisconsin, which contained a popu- 

* Hist, of Madison County (Illinois), 91 ; also ex-Gov. Thos. Ford, Illi- 
nois, 280, 281. Ford says : " The southerner is perhaps the most hospit- 
able and generous to individuals. He is lavish of his victuals, his liquors, 
and other personal favors. But the northern man is the most liberal in 
contributing to whatever is for the public benefit. Is a schoolhouse, a 
bridge, or a church to be built, a road to be made, a school or minister to 
be maintained, or taxes to be paid for the honor or support of govern- 
ment, the northern man is never found wanting." See, also, Shaw, Local 
Government in Illinois, 11. Also C. A. Church, Hist, of Rockford, 160 ff. 

' Ford, Illinois, 281. This was said in a speech by Lieutenant-Governor 
Kinney before the state Senate; he said that the Yankees spread every- 
where, and that he was looking daily for them to overrun the state. 

' Church, Hist, of Rockford, 161. 



210 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

latlon made up almost entirely of New Yorkers and 
New Englanders, as did this northern quarter of Illinois. 
Among these delegates of 1840 were several from Ver- 
mont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut ; a Putney, Ver- 
mont, man was made chairman/ A set of resolutions 
was drawn up, stating that since it was the general be- 
lief of the residents of the disputed tract that it ought 
to be a part of Wisconsin, therefore a committee should 
be appointed to inform the governor of Wisconsin of 
the result of the meeting. Other boundary conventions 
were held in different parts of the district within the 
next eighteen months, and similar resolutions adopted. 
In August, 1842, the Commissioners' Court of Winne- 
bago County having submitted the matter to popular 
vote, the returns gave 976 for annexation to Wisconsin, 
and 6 ajrainst it. Yet the movement lost its momen- 
tum and the plan came to nothing.^ Nevertheless, the 
episode is most significant of the strong sectional antag- 
onism, and the length to which the Northern pioneers 
were willing to go rather than be dominated by an ele- 
ment foreiofn in aims and interests to their own. 

The New Englanders who led this movement for 
secession to Wisconsin had practically all come into Illi- 
nois since 1830,^ but the number of emigrants before 
that time was only the smallest fraction in comparison 
with the host who came during the six or seven years 
preceding the panic of 1837, when immigration was 
ao^ain for a time retarded. The close of the Black Hawk 

» Hist. ofRockford, 162. ^ Lhid., 163, 164. 

^ See maps in chapter ix for 1840 and 1850, and frontispiece for 1860. 
See map opposite. 



Longitude West 



New England Settlement 




INDIANA AND ILLINOIS 211 

War of 1832 saw a marked increase in the number of 
settlers to the northern counties, especially, partly be- 
cause danger from savages no longer confronted the 
pioneer, and partly because of the increased knowledge 
of the fertile lands through which the volunteers had 
passed. Not only did many of the soldiers move here 
themselves, but they invited their old neighbors and 
friends to join them/ Moreover, writers like Peck were 
getting out their gazetteers for those who contemplated 
emigration from the older states, and the prospects for 
future wealth were most alluring. 

In studying the movement of the tide of immigration 
which poured in from the East after the Black Hawk 
War, again and again are we impressed with the con- 
servatism of it, — the recurrence of methods which had 
marked the expansion of Massachusetts or Connecticut 
two centuries before. Illinois was settled by many New 
England colonies, such as those with whose type and 
organization we are already familiar. A company from 
Gilmanton, New Hampshire, settled Hanover (now called 
Metamora) in 1835, after the prospecting tour of their 
townsman, John Page, who had picked out the tract as 
being peculiarly attractive for farms. Others from Rhode 
Island, Vermont, and Massachusetts joined the settle- 
ment later.^ A number of settlers from Pittsfield, Massa- 
chusetts, joined forces to begin Pittsfield, Illinois, though 
here the movement was simply a neighborhood affair, 
and not that of an organized colony.^ Tremont, in 

• Hist, of Stephenson County, 225. See map opposite page 236. 
» Past and Present of Woodford County, 274-612. 
' Five brothers aud a few other families came in 1820. Hist, of Pike 
County, 650-690. 



212 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

Tazewell County, was laid out around a public square, 
the character of the buildings and the whole tone of the 
village being in 1838 remarkably like that of a New 
England town.* The Wethersfield colony was settled 
by a company formed of men from Maine to New York, 
but its impetus came from the pastor of the Wethers- 
field, Connecticut, Congregational Church. Each $250- 
share entitled its holder to one hundred and sixty acres 
of prairie land, twenty acres of timber, and a town lot. 
A committee of three set out in 1836, after $25,000 had 
been paid in, and purchased one hundred quarter-sections. 
The town was laid out with wide streets, one block was 
set apart for a public square, and one for academy and 
college purposes. Though only four of the sixty original 
members of the association ever came to live in the town, 
it was filled up by New Englanders, a Congregational 
church was orsfanized in 1839 with fifteen members, 
and the town of Kewanee perpetuates the New Eng- 
land pioneers.^ 

A church colony from Benson, Vermont, moved as a 
whole to DuPage County; later, with other New Eng- 
land settlers, they formed a "Squatters' Union" to pro- 
tect their rights, with separate subordinate organizations 
in each township.^ The "Stonington Colony" moved to 
Stonington, Ilhnois, in 1837 ; ^ a Rhode Island company 
about to migrate in 1832 was deterred by reports of 

1 A. D. Jones, Illinois and the West, 72, 73. The village tavern was 
kept in 1838 by an ex-shipmaster from Duxbury, Mass. Ibid., 71. 

* Hist, of Henry County, 137-145. The streets of the town are named 
Dwight, Edwards, Tenney, Payson, Hollis, etc. 

» C. W. Richmond and H. F. Vallette, DuPage County, 46-52. 

* Portrait and Biographical Record of Christian County, 336. 



INDIANA AND ILLINOIS 213 

Indian massacres, so that only one family actually made 
the journey.^ The Mt. Hope colony, however, was a suc- 
cess. The scheme originated in Rhode Island in 1835, 
and had for its object the opening up of Western lands 
and the providing of homes for farmers, mechanics, and 
tradesmen. A constitution and by-laws were drawn up, 
and a committee of four sent out to locate land for 
the " Providence Farmers' and Mechanics' Emigrating 
Society," as the association was called. About fifteen 
families had already moved to Illinois, when the panic 
of 1837 broke up the plan. School and church were 
organized by friends in the East, but the settlement 
remained small.^ A Northampton, Massachusetts, colony 
was a near neighbor of a Norwich, Connecticut, one in 
La Salle County ; ^ while a Hampshire colony, with its 
church organized in Northampton, Massachusetts, and 
its own academy, came to Bureau County, and planted 
a town near one begun by an association from Provi- 
dence, Rhode Island.* A Rhode Island colony settled 
Delavan, in Tazewell County.^ 

The Maine colony which settled at Rockton, Winne- 
bago County, sent Ira Hersey in 1837 as their repre- 
sentative to visit Illinois and select a good tract of land. 
He was greatly impressed with the possibilities of the 
West, and on his return fired his neighbors with an 

1 W. H. Perrin (ed.), Cass County, 124. 

2 Hist, of McLean County, 579. The land was held in trust till 1854, 
when a number of men from Bloomington bought what was left. 

3 E. Baldwin, Hist, of La Salle County, 374, 375. 

* H. C. Bradsby (ed.). Hist, of Bureau County, 126, 181. 
® An article signed "New York Observer," in The New Yorker, Aug, 
31, 1839, page 572. 



214 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

especial enthusiasm for the beautiful Rock River valley. 
The colony v^as formed, and with Mr. Hersey as their 
leader, they departed. They went from Portland to Bos- 
ton ; then to Providence by rail ; by water to New York 
and Philadelphia ; again by rail across Pennsylvania to 
Pittsburg", where they took passage down the Ohio River. 
In Cincinnati they purchased provisions and wagons, 
and continuing their way passed up the Mississippi, and 
up the Illinois as far as Ottawa, where they bought oxen 
and cows. Then they finished their journey overland 
to their new home.^ In the same year was formed their 
Congregational church. There were at least twenty-two 
colonies in Illinois, all of which had their origin in New 
England or in New York, most of them planted between 
1830 and 1840.== 

One characteristic feature has seemed noteworthy to 
the writers on this period of Illinois settlement, — the 
poorest land was chosen for locations. With the con- 

1 Carr, History of Rockton, 39, 40. See map opposite page 236. 

^ Some colonies which appear as Southern colonies were perhaps New 
England ones. In the winter of 190.5-06 there appeared in the Boston 
Transcript an item asking for certain information hinted at in some old 
family papers, showing that a New England colony early in the 1800's 
had emigrated from Charlemont, Massachusetts, to what is now West 
Virginia, and from there to Edwards County, Illinois ; some New Yorkers 
had been in the colony also. Yet Edwards County is always counted a 
region settled by Southerners. Another instance of the same sort is in the 
settlement of Sangamon County ; within a few years previous to 1857, 
sixty or seventy families had removed from Cape May County, New 
Jersey, to Sangamon County, Illinois. These would be reckoned as New 
Jersey settlers; Cape May County has, however, always retained much 
of its New England character. Its first settlers were from New Haven 
and Long Island, the names in all three places being much alike, and there 
are Carmans in all. See C. T. Stevens, Hist, of Cape May County [New 
Jersey], 29-59, 280. 



INDIANA AND ILLINOIS 215 

servatism inherent in the Anglo-Saxon, the settlers chose 
land like that to which they had been accustomed at 
home. The prairies, with their boundless sweep, were 
unknown factors ; hence the pioneers doubted the prac- 
ticability of cultivating them to advantage. The first 
log cabins were built close to woods and streams, the 
prames being used simply as ranges for cattle and sheep, 
and he was a visionary and a foolish enthusiast who 
dared to state that the prairies would ere long be set- 
tled as thickly as the timbered stretches.^ But as land be- 
came scarcer, the newcomers were forced to buy prairie- 
land, and found ready to their hand the richest soil of all. 
Although the fourteen northern counties, with their 
attractive combination of wooded river-banks and roll- 
ing prairie, were settled solidly by emigrants from the 
states east of the Hudson River or from New York itself, 
yet many other counties had numerous representatives 
of New England within their borders. Nearly every 
county above Springfield drew a large proportion of 
settlers from the East, while to the south there were very 
few, though a stray Connecticut or Massachusetts pio- 
neer might be found here and there.^ In Henry County 
alone there were five New England colonies : Andover, 

» H. L. Boles, Hist, of DeKalb County, 35. 

^ One of the founders of Cairo was born in Hartford, Connecticut ; he 
had lived in Kaskaskia from 1832 until 1843, when he removed to Cairo. 
See W. H. Perrin (ed.), Hist, of Alexander, Union, and Pulaski Counties, 33. 
Pittsfield, Pike County, Illinois, is named for the old Massachusetts 
home of its first settlers. See Hist, of Pike County, 650. The statement 
made above is based upon a detailed study of the early emigrants in all 
these counties, as contained in about thirty county histories ; the results 
are set forth in the maps of Illinois and the rest of the old Northwest 
Territory, for 1830, 1840, 1850, and 1860. 



216 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

Wethersfield, Geneseo, Morristown, and La Grange, all 
of which had educational projects in mind/ 

With the map of New England settlement in Illi- 
nois in mind, it is not difficult to trace the location 
of Congregational churches. Yet not until the decade 
1830-40, when immigration was filling up the northern 
counties most rapidly, when five hundred towns were 
laid out in two years, did Congregationalism secure any 
other foothold than that of a precarious missionary en- 
terprise.^ Illinois College, itself a child of Yale,^ was a 

' The first three were also strongly imbued with a missionary spirit. 
Hist, of Henry County, 117. S. DeW. Drown, in his Record and Hist. 
View of Peoria, 117, gives the place of nativity of the voters of that city 
in 1845. Of 642 listed, 107 were from New England, 111 from New York. 
The distribution in New England is as follows : — 

Massachusetts 52 

New Hampshire 23 

Vermont 15 

Connecticut 12 

Maine 3 

Khode Island 2 

Chicago was from the beginning a favorite goal for New Englanders, 
and its largest banking and mercantile houses are the work of Connecti- 
cut and Massachusetts men like Marshall Field. The first president of the 
great First National Bank was born in Norfolk, Connecticut, but had 
spent his boyhood in New York. The early directors came from the fol- 
lowing towns : Hanson, Danvers, and Groton, Massachusetts ; Sharon, 
Connecticut ; Winchester, Gilsum, and Newport, New Hampshire ; 
Rutland and Swanton Falls, Vermont ; Machias, Maine. See H. C. Morris, 
First National Bank of Chicago, 133-168. The first three pastors of the 
First Presbyterian Church of Chicago came from Hadley, Massachusetts ; 
Lebanon, Connecticut ; and Bridgeport, Connecticut. Many professional 
men — lawyers and doctors — were from New England. A. T. Andreas, 
Hist, of Cook County, 243-290. 

^ J. M. Peck, Gazetteer of Illinois, 109 ; J. Moses, Illinois Historical 
and Statistical, ii, 1705. 

3 Peck, Gazetteer of Illinois, 83, 84. 



INDIANA AND ILLINOIS 217 

leader in the movement to establish churches, of which 
four were founded in 1833, five in 1834, one in 1835, 
ten in 1836, and by 1840 forty-eight had made more or 
less feeble beginnings. There were recorded in 1840 
sixty ministers, and 1500 church members ; in 1870, 
when the churches numbered 244, the membership was 
17,689/ 

With the coming of the Eastern pioneers, there came 
a change in the character of the ruling powers in the 
state ; whereas in 1818 the Southerners had been in con- 
trol and had maintained their supremacy for a quarter 
of a century thereafter, nevertheless gradually Northern 
men became dominant in the legislature, and Puritan 
traditions began to manifest themselves here and there 
upon the statute-book. The Southerners did not yield 
without many skirmishes to save their supremacy. In 
the constitutional convention of 1847 the struggle cul- 
minated, but it ceased almost entirely after the amended 
constitution was adopted the next year ; for there the ques- 
tion of local government was adjusted by a compromise. 
The contention had been over the acceptance of the 
county system prevalent in the central and southern 
parts of the state, or the township system which the 
northern counties had adopted. By the new constitu- 
tion, each county was to decide its own form of local 
government by popular vote ; the northern counties 
adopted the township system, the southern counties re- 
tained their old organization. Within the next ten years, 
however, a large number of the central counties followed 
the example of their neighbors on the north, probably 

1 Moses, III. Hist, and Stat., ii, 1075. 



218 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

owing largely to the greatly increased immigration into 
that part of the state from New York and New Eng- 
land/ 

Until the Civil War, Illinois continued to receive a 
large quota of immigrants from the East. The lines 
of development had been largely marked out by 1840 ; 
here and there, however, Puritan tradition changed 
their course, as it had already in the case of the town- 
ship system. For example, a little later came the triumph 
of the struggle for free schools, the bill to introduce 
this system being fathered by a Massachusetts man who 
had lived in Kentucky and Mississippi, but had brought 
his educational ideas unchanged through his pioneering, 
to Illinois.^ At Evanston, the " Biblical Institute " was 
modeled in 1855 after the theological seminary at New- 
bury, Vermont ; and the Bowdoinham, Maine, pioneer 
who laid out the town was instrumental in founding 
Northwestern University.^ Southern Illinois is to-day 
very like Kentucky ; northern Illinois is to-day a new 
home of Congregationalism, public schools, and the 
township system, transplanted to the West by descend-^ 

1 Dr. Albert Shaw, Local Government in Illinois^ 11. 

^ Hist, of Shelby and Moultrie Counties, 159. 

3 F. E. Willard, Classical Town (Evanston), 25-44. Rockford College 
for Women was begun as a seminary in 1851 by men and women of New 
England stock. See Church, Hist, of Rockford, 107, 288-290. The first en- 
dowment gift to Shurtleff College, Alton, was from Benjamin Shurtleff, 
of Boston. See Jones, Illinois and the West, 119. The Female Seminary at 
Monticello was begun by a native of Chatham, Massachusetts. See Hair, 
Gazetteer of Madison County, 151. Almira College, Greenville, was founded 
by two men educated at New Hampton, New Hampshire, and Brown 
University, Providence, Rhode Island. See Hist, of Bond and Montgomery 
Counties, 109, 110. 



INDIANA AND ILLINOIS 219 

ants of the Puritans. The two sections of the state, each 
contributing its quota to the welfare of the whole, have 
produced a new commonwealth which is neither South- 
ern nor Puritan ; — it is Illinois, a part of the great 
" Middle West." 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 

As in the earlier maps, the maps illustrating this chapter are prepared 
from a great amount of detail gathered from many sources not enumer- 
ated in the footnotes, nor cited in these notes. Fifty-six county and local 
histories were used for the Illinois maps, besides the ones specifically 
cited. The material for this chapter and the next was collected almost 
exclusively in the library of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. 

For Indiana, the county histories prepared by unknown persons to be 
sold by subscription are often poor, and badly put together ; but they 
contain biographies of many inhabitants of the locality, and from the 
statistics so obtained one may draw safe conclusions. Rev. T. H. Ball, 
Lake County, Indiana, 1834 to 1872 (Chicago, 1873), stands in a class by 
itself, for it is excellent. Thomas B. Helm's History of Cass County, 
Indiana (Chicago, 1878), and Goodspeed and Blanchard's Counties of 
Porter and Lake (Chicago, 1882), as well as their Counties of Whitley and 
Noble (Chicago, 1882) are fairly good, as are H. W. Beckwith's History 
of Fountain County (History of Montgomery County is bound in the same 
volume), and his History of Vigo and Parke Counties. In Levi Coffin's 
Reminiscences (Cincinnati, 1876) is given much suggestive material on 
the Quaker settlements in Wayne and Randolph counties, and their emi- 
gration from North Carolina. J. H. Wheeler in his Historical Sketches of 
North Carolina, 1584 to 1851 (2 vols, in 1, Philadelphia, 1851), gives 
similar information. Rev. Dr. F. C. Holliday's Indiana Methodism (Cin- 
cinnati, 1873) is suggestive and valuable. John H. B. Nowland has a 
volume of Sketches of Prominent Citizens of 1876, on Indianapolis people. 
W. W. Woollen prepared the Biographical and Historical Sketches of 
Early Indiana (Indianapolis, 1883), and with D. W. Howe and J. P. 
Dunn edited the Executive Journal of Indiana Territory, 1800-16, which 
is in the Indiana Historical Society Publications, vol. iii. These form the 
best sources for the history of Indiana before it passed out of the terri- 
torial stage. Almost all of these last-named works on Indiana history 
were from the Howe Collection in the Public Library of Indianapolis. 



220 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

For Illinois, there are some excellent county histories, — A. T. Andreas, 
History of Cook County (Chicago, 1884) ; H. L. Boies, History of DeKalb 
County (Chicago, 1868) ; C. A. Church, History of Rockford and Winne- 
bago County (Rockford, 1900) ; James T. Hair (compiler). Gazetteer of 
Madison County (Alton, 1866). Thomas Ford, at one time governor of 
Illinois, wrote the best account of his state from an intimate knowledge 
of it, — A History of Illinois, 1818-1847 (Chicago and New York, 1854). 
Professor E. B. Greene's The Government of Illinois (in Handbooks of 
Amer. Govt. Series, New York, 1904) is very suggestive on the influences 
which went to the making of Illinois ; while Dr. Albert Shaw, in his 
Local Government in Illinois (J. H. U. Studies in History and Political 
Science) has done an admirable piece of work under a famous teacher. 
John Moses, Illinois: Historical and Statistical (2 vols., Chicago, 1892); 
J. M. Peck, Gazetteer of Illinois (Jacksonville, 1834) ; A. D. Jones, 
Illinois and the West (Boston and Philadelphia, 1838) ; S. DeW. Drown, 
Record and Historical View of Peoria (Peoria, 1850) ; — all these have 
done good work in gathering information relative to Illinois in its early 
days. A good example of the value which a history of a local institution 
has, is afforded by H, C. Morris's History of the First National Bank of 
Chicago (Chicago, 1902). Miss F, E. Willard has given valuable infor- 
mation in A Classic Town, (Evanston, Illinois. Published in Chicago, 
1891.) 

Newspapers of the decades 1820-60, such as The New Yorker, have 
letters and notices sometimes which mention Western emigration. 

The admirable studies in the University of Wisconsin and the Columbia 
University Series have been referred to in the footnotes on pages 205 
and 207. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE NEW ENGLANDERS AS STATE BUILDERS: 
MICHIGAN AND WISCONSIN, 1820-1860 

The preceding chapters have shown phases of the 
westward movement of population out from the Hudson 
River, as well as north of the Ohio, during the first 
half-century after 1800. The rapid growth of western 
New York, the filling in of Pennsylvania, the early 
settlements in Ohio have been traced, one after the 
other ; the growing density of population in Indiana, 
then in Illinois, has been shown. One other region was 
being peopled during the second quarter of the century, 
along the same lines, — the territory now called Mich- 
igan and Wisconsin. 

Until some years after the close of the War of 1812, 
Michigan offered little attraction to the emigrant bound 
for the West. Ohio lands were still cheap and plentiful, 
and nearer to the markets which the East and the South 
afforded ; western New York was still very tempting, 
with its fertile lands not yet too dear for a farmer's 
purse, and there was therefore no need to pierce the 
wilderness which lay to the north and west of the upper 
counties of Ohio.* Moreover, Michigan was scarcely 
known at aU, save as a rendezvous for Indians ; the 
lands had not yet been brought into the market, and 

* See map for 1810, facing page 182 ; and for 1820, facing page 206. 



222 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

the man who determined to make a home in such a 
region must run the risk of being a dispossessed " squat- 
ter," reaping no reward for years of pioneering, with 
its attendant dangers, toil, and hardships. Tecumseh 
and his Indian warriors had terrorized the settlers of 
Indiana and Ohio until after 1815 ; even then the 
agents who were sent out to select tracts where the gov- 
ernment proposed to locate the bounty-lands for the 
soldiers of the late war brought back very unfavorable 
reports of the prospects which Michigan offered. Lastly, 
there was an entire absence of roads, and Indian trails 
leading off into deep woods afforded the only passage 
to the interior. According to the census of 1800, Mich- 
igan had 3206 inhabitants, excluding Indians ; in 1805 
its white population was still confined to the settlements 
of Detroit, Frenchtown, Mackinaw, and the vicinity of 
the Detroit River. Five years later, the census gave an 
increase of only 1500 ; Detroit was a village with 1650 
inhabitants ; ^ there was not a single farm or village in 
any direction five miles from the territorial boundaries. 
The map for 1820 shows no further extension of the 
frontier line, though the population of the district about 
Detroit had grown more dense.^ But the next decade 
saw the completion of the Erie Canal and the rise of 
steamboat navigation to the West; to these factors 
may be traced the beginning of growth for both Mich- 
igan and Wisconsin. Furthermore, the same two factors 
determined to a large extent the character and the 
future institutions of those states, since by way of the 

1 J. V. Campbell, Polit. Hist, of Mich., 234. 
' See map facing page 206. 



THE NEW ENGLANDERS AS STATE BUILDERS 223 

canal and the steamboat New Englanders and trans- 
planted New Englanders from New York made their 
way to these portions of " the West." Into the building 
of these two commonwealths have thus been wrought 
the traditions and ideals of Puritan origin. 

A word as to the earliest laws in this part of the 
country will be significant. When Michigan was first 
erected into a territory it included Wisconsin within its 
bounds ; in 1805 one fourth of the territorial laws were 
taken from the Virginia statute-books, with the remain- 
der from Ohio, Massachusetts, and New York in about 
equal proportions.^ In 1815, however, an act reincor- 
porating Detroit provided that the electors might in 
town-meeting levy taxes for such purposes as they saw 
fit.^ The year that lands were put on sale (1818), an act 
provided that for certain offenses the culprit should be 
whipped at the whipping-post, — a punishment which 
was taken from the laws of Vermont.^ These laws show 
successive stages in the settlement of the territory; by 
1818 a few New Englanders were straggling in, and 
their influence was beginning to make itself felt in the 
statute books, as it was to do later in the institutions of 
the new state. 

The character of the Michigan settlers was very largely 

* E. W. Bemis, Local Government in Michigan and the Northwest (in " J. 
H. Univ. Studies," v. i, no. 5), p. 10. The Ohio laws were partly Virgin- 
ian and Pennsylvanian, at this period. Professor Salmon has called the 
author's attention to the fact that Judge Woodward of Detroit, whose 
influence was great at this time, was a profound admirer of Jefferson. 

' This privilege was also granted to Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, in 
1821. Ibid., 10. 

' History of St. Clair County, 207. After being reenacted once, the law 
was abolished in 1831. 



224 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

determined by the fact that most of them came to stay. 
They did not expect to leave the clearing in the forest 
as soon as half a dozen neighbors surrounded them; 
here they intended to plant permanent homes for them- 
selves, and here they meant to rear their children/ The 
sober perseverance of New England, the enterprise of 
New York, the steadiness of Pennsylvania, — all these 
were called into requisition by the difficulties of pioneer- 
ing in Michigan, where almost every mile of ground had 
to be cleared of trees before large farms could be culti- 
vated.^ Few wealthy men came at first; the population 
was made up of hardy, honest, small farmers, very tena- 
cious of their rights, but willing to concede to others the 
same privileges each demanded for himself.^ As a conse- 
quence there grew up a very independent state, but one 
which is more flexible in its character than those of New 
England, by virtue of the compromises necessary where 
men come from different parts of the country to meet 
in a wilderness where a commonwealth must be welded 
by the union of all the diverse elements within its 
boundaries. 

In 1824 there were but nine villages besides Detroit 
in the whole territory ; * a few pioneers had pierced their 

* Judge Albert Miller, "Pioneer Sketches," in Mich. Pion. Soc. Coll., 
vii, 251. 

' The first cabinet-maker in Grand Rapids, now the greatest centre for 
the manufacture of furniture in the United States, came from Keene, 
N. H. The lumbering interests of Michigan have been of importance 
since its early history. 

8 J. H. Lanman, Hist, of Michigan, 295-297. 

* A. D. P. Van Buren, "Pioneer Annals," in Mich. Pion. Soc. Coll., v, 
248. These were Port Lawrence, Monroe, Frenchtown, Pontiac, Browns- 
town, Truax's (near Detroit), Mt. Clemens, Palmer, and Saginaw. See 
map opposite page 206. 



THE NEW ENGLANDERS AS STATE BUILDERS 225 

way into the southwestern corner through an absohitely 
unbroken wilderness, some on foot, others on ponies, 
fording streams, following Indian trails, crossing 
swamps, and dropping down at night to sleep in the 
woods/ That year, however, saw the Erie Canal com- 
pleted, and together the New Englanders and New 
Yorkers took steamboat passage from Buffalo for Detroit. 
The Ohio River afforded a highway for emigrants to the 
southern portions of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, but the 
way to northern Illinois and Indiana, and to Michigan 
and Wisconsin, was overland, — a long and tedious 
journey. The Erie Canal made possible the settlement 
of these states by people from the North ; the whole 
character of the region north of the Ohio might have 
been very different had not that great highway, with 
steamboat navigation, opened up to the pioneer from 
New England and New York the possibilities of the 
Northwest. 

At Detroit the possible routes to the West divided ; 
— the first comers followed the "Chicago road," which 
was laid out and built in 1825 by the government as 
a military measure, and ran from Detroit through 
southern Michigan, around the end of the lake to Fort 
Dearborn, Illinois.^ Those who followed this thorough- 
fare peopled the southern tier of counties, dotting the 
prairies with hamlets and farms. The stream which came 
after 1834: went out over the territorial road directly 

' D. A. "Winslow, " Early History of Berrien County," in Mich. Pion. 
Soc. Coll., i, 122. 

' A. B. Copley, "Early Settlement of Southwestern Michigan," in 
Mich. Pion. Soc. Coll., v, 151. See map for 1830, facing page 210. 



226 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

west, and settled the second tier of counties, until they 
reached the southwestern corner of the state, where 
they found themselves preceded by hardy frontiersmen 
from Kentucky, Tennessee, the southern parts of Ohio, 
Indiana, and Illinois, who had followed in the footsteps 
of Indian fighters like Wayne. This advance guard had 
already selected the choicest land in the counties north- 
east of Berrien, and later comers passed north to find 
fertile lands as yet unoccupied. By 1835, at least 
seventeen more towns had been settled, besides many 
farms not near any village.^ From that time, the settle- 
ment of Michigan went on with astonishing rapidity. 
The fever for purchasing lands which preceded the 
panic of 1837 affected Michigan as it did the states to 
the south and west; the crisis of 1837-39 checked 
the movement for a short time ; then the tide of im- 
migration poured in even more strongly than before. 
This tide after 1825 always carried the New Englanders 
with it, and New Yorkers as well. 

For this study, the New England immigration is 
of peculiar interest. Upon the publication of John 
Farmer's map of Michigan, 1825-30, New Englanders 
found therein the accurate information concerning that 
territory which their caution demanded ; by 1837 " it 
seemed as if all New England were coming" to the 
state. ^ The fever for emigration pervaded the whole 
region from Rhode Island to Vermont, and every one 
seemed to have adopted for his own the popular song, 

1 A. D. P. Van Buren, "Pioneer Annals," in Mich. Pion. Soc. Coll., v, 
249. See maps opposite pages 236 and 246. 
' Silas Farmer, Detroit, 335. 



THE NEW ENGLANDERS AS STATE BUILDERS 227 

" Michigania." * Vermont sent most emigrants ; — 
12,588 of Michigan's citizens in 1880 were born in the 
Green Mountain State. Massachusetts had by the same 
report 9591; Connecticut, 6333; Maine, 5079; New 
Hampshire, 3300, and Rhode Island, 974. In the earliest 
days most of the Bay State representatives moved to De- 
troit and Kalamazoo, while Kent County was most attrac- 
tive to Vermonters. But the whole state is filled with re- 
presentatives of the New England region, mingling with 
their near neighbors of the same stock from New York. 
A glance at Berrien County will show the character 
of the New England settlements. From 1831 to 1842 
pioneers came from Norwich, Stamford, and New Mil- 
ford, Connecticut; Leominster, Chicopee, and Harwich, 
Massachusetts; Weybridge, Shoreham, Westminster, 
Addison, East Poultney, and Windsor County, Ver- 
mont ; Nelson, New Hampshire ; and from Maine.^ One 
pioneer will serve to typify hundreds. John Perrin, 
his wife, five sons, and four daughters, were the first 
settlers of Jefferson township, Hillsdale County. In 1835 
they left their home in Woodstock, Connecticut, took a 
vessel from Norwich to Albany, and made their journey 
through New York over the Erie Canal. At Buffalo 
they boarded a steamer bound for Detroit, which they 
reached three weeks from the day they bade good-by 
to their old home. Leaving the rest of the family behind, 

* The first verse runs thus : — 

" Come, all ye Yankee farmers who wish to change your lot, 
Who 've spunk enough to travel beyond your native spot, 
And leave behind the village where Pa and Ma do stay, 
Come follow me, and settle in Michigania, — 
Yea, yea, yea, in Michigania." — Detroit. 

' Hist, of Berrien and Van Buren Counties, 144-310. 



228 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

the father and the two eldest sons started out from 
Detroit to locate a farm ; they passed the Bear Creek 
valley, traveling on till they found a spring gushing 
from a rock on the hilly slopes of Jefferson township. 
All the surroundings were so like the old Connecticut 
home, that there the pioneer cabin was built, — the first 
house in the township/ Again and again did the set- 
tlers seek out the wooded lands which bore a striking 
resemblance to the tree-covered hills to which they 
were accustomed in the East. 

Nor did the pioneers come always by single families. 
In many an instance neighborhoods were settled by 
small colonies, who came in sufficient numbers to give 
to their new homes the character of the old ; and once 
wholesome social surroundings were established, others 
were attracted, who had come to the West to better 
their condition. Such a colony was that which settled in 
Sylvan township, Washtenaw County; ten or twelve 
families came from Addison County, Vermont, between 
1832 and 1834, to form what has always been called 
the " Vermont Settlement." ^ Here their Congregational 
church was organized in 1835. Another example is the 
Monroe colony, which was begun in 1816 by two bro- 
thers from Royalston, Massachusetts, whose neighbors 
in the succeeding years were from various Connecticut 
towns, from Scituate in Rhode Island, from New Hamp- 
shire, and Vermont. It was known in 1834 as a New 
England colony ; ^ "it was composed of men of such 

* C. Johnson, Hillsdale County, 272. 

2 Hist, of Washtenaw County, 753, 764, 

3 T. E. Wing (ed.), Hist, of Monroe County, 158-590, for lives of 
pioneers. 



THE NEW ENGLANDERS AS STATE BUILDERS 229 

intelligence and strength of character that in the early 
days of the State it was known as * the independent 
state of Monroe.' " ' 

The Vermontville colony deserves a longer descrip- 
tion.^ Here an organized company of emigrants from 
the Green Mountain State, " with Michigan, a church 
and a school in their minds," purchased land of the 
government under a written compact, drawn up at East 
Poultney, upon the advice and under the direction of 
their minister. Rev. Sylvester Cochrane, who alone of 
all the band had ever seen the land upon which it was 
proposed to settle. With the threefold purpose of pro- 
moting the spread of the Gospel in the wilderness, of 
advancing their own prosperity, and of carrying their 
moral and intellectual ideals to the frontier, they drew 
up a constitution and by-laws, and dispatched a com- 
mittee to prepare the way for the arrival of the colony. 
The committee had no easy task, for in 1836 the fever 
for speculation in Michigan lands had sent the price of 
the unoccupied tracts to a point far beyond their worth, 
and it was difficult to find a place where each of the 
thirty investors whose money the committee carried 
might have a quarter-section for his farm and a ten-acre 
lot for his village home as well situated as those of any 
of his neighbors. After several weeks of careful pros- 
pecting, the site for the town was finally chosen at 
what is now Vermontville, Eaton County; and the pur- 
chase made at the land-office in Kalamazoo. Trees were 
felled, and a village laid out around a public square ; 

1 Ihid., 158. 

» E. W. Barber, " The Vermontville Colony," in Mich. Pion. Soc. Coll., 
xxviii, 2, 197-265. 



230 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

then the colonists began to arrive. By wagon, canal, 
lake, and rude Michigan forest-roads, they made their 
way from East Poultney to their Vermontville home. 
Their Congregational church, with Rev. Sylvester 
Cochrane as pastor, was organized at the very begin- 
ning; for the first few years the minister was paid in 
work on his land, in money or in produce, as the parish- 
ioners could best afford. The school was held for a year 
in the log cabin of one family ; then a log schoolhouse 
was erected, and the children were taught for seven 
months in the year. A few years later an academy on 
the Vermont plan was organized to carry on the educa- 
tion of those who had finished the work in the little losf 
schoolhouse. In politics the colonists at Vermontville 
were divided, curiously enough ; those who came from 
Rutland and Addison counties were Whigs, while their 
neighbors from Bennington County were " rock-rooted 
Democrats." But all had the democratic idea, all held 
to the equality of man in all his rights, political and 
social, and when in 1854 the Republican party was 
organized, Vermontville became practically united in 
its ranks in a warfare against the extension of slavery. 
Marietta, Ohio, played no mean part in helping to 
shape Michigan's future character. Itself a New Eng- 
land colony. Marietta sent the first settler to Detroit 
after the British evacuation of that post in 1796, — 
Solomon Sibley, who became a judge of the Supreme 
Court. General Lewis Cass, born in Exeter, New Hamp- 
shire, served an apprenticeship at pioneering for fourteen 
years in Marietta before he became the second governor 
of Michigan Territory in 1815, — a post he filled till 1831. 



THE NEW ENGLANDERS AS STATE BUILDERS 231 

During those sixteen years he negotiated twenty-one 
Indian treaties, thereby making Michigan a safe home 
for hundreds of families which were soon to give to the 
state its distinctively New England character. General 
Cass left the governor's chair to be Secretary of War ; 
then after a time United States Senator from Michigan ; 
in 1848 a candidate for the presidency; and lastly, 
Buchanan's Secretary of State; — such was the part 
played in the national councils by the most eminent of 
Michigan's statesmen.^ William Woodbridge, the Sec- 
retary of the Territory after 1815, though born in Nor- 
wich, Connecticut, was a Marietta lawyer who had stud- 
ied in the same office with Cass ; he became governor of 
the state in 1839.^ Isaac Crary, the territorial delegate 
and the first representative Michigan sent to Congress, 
was born in Preston, Connecticut.^ 

Such were the men who helped lay the foundations 
of Michigan's development in the territorial days ; but 
New England influence did not end with statehood. A 
list of the first fourteen men who occupied the gover- 
nor's chair after Michigan's admission to the Union will 
illustrate the prominence of New England and New 
York pioneers in politics,^ — six from New England, six 

* Representative Men of Michigan, 35, 36. Also J. V. Campbell, Outlines 
of the Polit. Hist, of Mich., 217. 

^ Representative Men of Michigan, 156. 

3 Ibid., " Third Congressional District," 28. 

* First governor . . native of Virginia. 



Second 

Third 

Fourth 

Fifth 

Sixth 



of Norwich, Ct., but had lived in Ohio. 
..." of Amherst, N. H., but had lived in Vt 
(2 terms) " of Limerick, Me. 
..." of Hamilton, N. Y. 
..." of Massachusetts. 



232 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

from New York, one from Virginia, and one from 
Pennsylvania. 

From the character of the population it is easy to 
predict that the attention of Michigan pioneers would 
be centred at the first opportunity upon the question 
of schools. S. F. Drury, born in Spencer, Massachusetts, 
who had become much interested in common school 
education in his old home, originated and organized in 
the state of his adoption a teachers' institute, which 
grew into the State Normal School of Otsego.* He 
worked for the charter of Olivet College in 1859, and 
several years later helped to found Drury College in 
Illinois. Michigan normal schools owe a debt of grati- 
tude to Rev. John D. Pierce, a graduate of Brown 
University, who had come to Michigan as a Presbyterian 
missionary, and was the first superintendent of public 
instruction after Michigan became a state ; Mr. Pierce 
suggested the idea of a system of normal schools in 
1836.^ But Michigan's chief pride is her university, the 



Seventh governor 



native of Greencastle, Penn. 



Eighth " . ..." of Hoosick, N. Y. 

Ninth " . . . . " of Camillas, N. Y. 

Tenth « . . . . " of Springport, N. Y. 

Eleventh " . ..." of Caroline, N. Y. 
Twelfth " . . . . « of Dartmouth, Mass. 
Thirteenth « , . . . " of Coventry, R. I. 
Fourteenth " . ..." of Medina, N. Y. 

(This to 1877) 
In Portrait and Biographical Record of Genesee, Lapeer, and Tuscola 
Counties, 105-157. 

' J. B. Porter, "Memoir of S. F. Drury," in Mich. Pion. Soc. Coll., vii, 
382, 383. 

' A. C. McLaughlin, Higher Education in Michigan, 99, 100. (In Bureau 
of Education, Circular no. 4, 1891.) 



THE NEW ENGLANDERS AS STATE BUILDERS 233 

head of the public school system of the state, and the 
model of almost all state universities since founded. 
Isaac Crary, of whom mention has been made, was chair- 
man of the committee on education in the Michigan 
constitutional convention, and to him may be attributed, 
more than to any one else, the system as it is to-day. 
He had made a study of Cousin's famous report on the 
Prussian system of education, and German influence 
was especially strong, when it was carried out along 
practical lines by men with strong predilections for 
popular education.^ Mr. Crary had been educated at 
Bacon Academy, Colchester, Connecticut, and at Wash- 
ington (now Trinity) College, Hartford. President 
Angell, under whose administration the university has 
taken a place in the front rank of American colleges, 
is a native of Scituate, Rhode Island, and a graduate 
of Brown University.^ 

Olivet College represents New England, and Puritan 
Congregationalism in Ohio. Founded in 1844, it was 
the child of Oberlin ; to its planting Oberlin graduates 
contributed more than any other persons. The original 
plan was for both a college and a Christian colony, the 
latter to found and foster the former ; but the scheme 

' Professor Lucy M. Salmon has a valuable article on Judge Wood- 
ward's plan for a university in the days when Michigan was still a terri- 
tory, "Education in Michigan during the Territorial Period," in Mich. 
Pion. Soc. Coll., vii, 36-38. 

See, also, Professor Salmon's article, " Types of State Education," in 
the New England Magazine, January, 1897, pp. 601, 607. 

* A. C. McLaughlin, Higher Education in Michigan, 34, 35, 73. The 
university was not coeducational until 1870. It would be interesting to 
know how great a part economy has played in making Western institutions 
so largely coeducational. 



234 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

did not work out wholly in practice. The Congrega- 
tional church of Olivet was, however, organized the 
year after the college was founded, and the two have 
always been intimately connected.^ 

Hand in hand with the school goes the church, 
following Puritan tradition. At first Congregationalism 
in Michigan was "largely merged in Presby terianism " 
by the " Plan of Union " with which we were familiar 
in New York, and many of the churches so constituted 
in the beginning have continued to be Presbyterian 
down to the present.^ In 1835 six Congregational 
churches had been organized, most of which never made 
any compromise with the " accommodation system " ; 
within five years the formation of an association of 
their own denomination gave them the advantage of 
organization which they had lacked before. By 1855 
there were 106 Congregational churches in Michigan 
under their own associations, with 4987 members ; in 
1880, 226, with a roll of 17,064 names. Congregation- 
alism has been from the beginning strong in Michi- 
gan ; it would have been stronger probably, but for the 
change it had already undergone in New York and 
Ohio through the " Plan of Union " system, — a com- 
promise to frontier conditions which emigrants from 
those states transplanted to their Michigan homes. 

Nor is the third traditional institution wanting; 
Michigan was the first Western state to adopt the town- 

* S. W. Durant, Hist, of Ingham and Eaton Counties, 530, 632. Also 
George W. Keyes, " Sketch of the First Congregational Church," ibid., 
635. 

' Rev. D. P. Hurd, " Congregationalism in Michigan," in 3fich. Pion. 
Sac. Coll., vii, 103-116. 



THE NEW ENGLANDERS AS STATE BUILDERS 235 

meeting, though her example has been followed by 
Wisconsin, Illinois, and Minnesota. Ohio, Indiana, and 
Illinois all show a compromise system analogous to that 
of New York and Pennsylvania; the Michigan system 
is most like that of Massachusetts. On the first Monday 
in April of each year the meeting is held, and may be 
attended by every male citizen of the state who is over 
twenty-one years of age. Here the supervisor presides, 
and is one of three inspectors of election, the others 
being the justice of the peace whose office soonest 
expires, and the clerk of the township. All who attend 
the meeting may participate in the conduct of it. After 
officers have been chosen, the electors discuss town busi- 
ness. They listen to complaints, — as of cattle running 
at large ; they regulate such matters as licensing dogs, 
keeping and selling gunpowder, maintaining hospitals, 
and so on. The various officers of the township also 
make their reports at this time. The difference between 
the Michigan town-meeting and that in New England 
is that in Michigan incorporated villages which exist 
within the township may either in village-meeting or 
through their trustees provide for the administration of 
their own local affairs, as in the regulation of the fire 
department, police, and streets, — and therefore do not 
vote in town-meeting. Where Massachusetts has three 
selectmen, Michigan has one supervisor, whose duties 
are not administrative as in Massachusetts, but rather 
executive and clerical. Most distinctive is the Michigan 
township board, which is made up of the supervisor, 
township clerk, and two justices of the peace, and which 
exercises many of the powers of the Massachusetts select- 



236 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

men. "Michigan borrowed the organization [of this 
body] from the county board of New York, and its 
powers from Massachusetts." ^ 

But one state remains for our study, — Wisconsin. 
Save for a few French settlers scattered here and there, 
a remnant which had followed in the footsteps of Jesuit 
priests and Canadian fur-traders, Wisconsin was until 
1826 a veritable wilderness. In that year there came to 
the southwestern corner of the territory, following up 
the Mississippi River, some venturesome Southerners 
from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, attracted to 
the region by the rich lead mines found there. It was 
in this way that Galena came to be for many years a 
far more important market and trading point than was 
Milwaukee, and was well-known when Chicago was no- 
thing more than a fort. Lead mining was a great indus- 
try on one side of the territory, when agriculture was 
just beginning on the other. Finally, the two streams of 
emigrants met about midway, but even to-day south- 
eastern Wisconsin has characteristics which quite dis- 
tinguish it from the other portions of the state.^ 

The Black Hawk War was a very potent factor in 
directing the attention of the East to the great tracts of 
land north of Illinois which were not only unoccupied, 
but were only slightly explored. The newspapers pub- 
lished glowing accounts of the rich country of northern 
Illinois and its neighbor on Lake Michigan ; soldiers 
carried back tales to their friends ; and speedily thou- 

^ E. W. Bemis, Local Government in Michigan and the Northwest, 14-17. 
For settlement in 1840, see map opposite. 

^ Tenney and Atwood, Memorial Record of the Fathers of Wisconsifif 
14. 



00 Longitude Woat 85 from (jrrccnwich 



New England Settlement 

in the old 
Northwest Territory. 

1840 




THE NEW ENGLANDERS AS STATE BUILDERS 237 

sands of " intelligent, hardy, and enterprising " people 
from New York and New England swarmed in. Settle- 
ments were begun along the lake shore in 1834. The 
land in Green County was brought into the market in 
1835 ; within five years that section had many inhabit- 
ants, most of whom came from Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, 
Pennsylvania, or Virginia, Illinois contributing the 
most. Hardly any came from New England, but some 
who were the children of New England parents came 
from New York.^ Prairie du Chien, an old French town, 
had in 1837 nearly one hundred French families, but 
only ten American ones, and four unmarried American 
men.^ Among these Americans was an itinerant Meth- 
odist preacher from Connecticut, a wanderer from 
Machias, Maine, who had lived a year in Michigan, and 
one man from Vermont.^ Before 1841 settlements had 
been made in the fertile Rock River valley, and in the 
country between these farms and the shore of Lake 
Michigan. The panic of 1837 brought many families 
who sought to retrieve their fortunes in the West ; these 
came in, many of them, by way of the Wisconsin River 
valley ; lastly settlers came up the Mississippi River, and 
moved along its eastern tributaries. By 1850, even the 
northwestern corner of the state was receiving its small 
share of immigrants.^ 

The institutions of Wisconsin would naturally, so one 
might suppose, have been shaped by the workers on its 

' H. M. Bingham, HisL of Green County, 15. 

2 W. H. C. Folsom, Fifty Years in the Northwest, 19. 

3 Ibid., 26, 28. 

♦ W. C. Whitford, " Early Education in Wisconsin," in Coll. of Wis. 
Hist. Sac, V, 335. See maps opposite pages 236 and 246. 



238 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

two frontiers, — by Kentuckians and their coadjutors 
in the lead-mining regions, as well as by the emigrants 
who had come in around Racine and Milwaukee by way 
of the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes. At first this 
was true, and two systems of local government grew up 
in Wisconsin during the territorial stage ; — in the 
earlier settled counties in the southwestern corner the 
county system came in with the Southern emigrants ; 
while the eastern districts, filled up by New Yorkers 
and New Englanders, adopted the township form of or- 
ganization. These two systems existed side by side, as 
it were, throughout the territorial stage, until the state 
constitution was formed in 1846-47. But they did not 
exist in peace ; in 1841, when emigrants from the East 
had become sufficiently numerous to protest, their in- 
fluence was strong enough to secure a change from the 
county commissioner plan which had been in force up 
to that time, and a law was passed by which the people 
of each county might determine whether for them local 
government should be based on the Southern plan or on 
that of New England. When Wisconsin was admitted 
as a state in 1848, only five counties were retaining the 
county system, and these were the southeastern counties 
of the lead-mining district, where Southerners were still 
in the majority.^ 

In the end the New York system of local government 
— itself a compromise with leanings toward the New 
England form — triumphed, and was embodied in the 
state constitution. The reason for its adoption is not 

* D. E, Spencer, " Local Government in Wisconsin," Coll. of Wis. Hist. 
Soc, xi, 505-507. 



THE NEW ENGLANDERS AS STATE BUILDERS 239 

difficult to ascertain when one has examined the person- 
nel of those bodies which determined the lines along 
which Wisconsin's development as a state should run. 
There were two constitutional conventions held in Wis- 
consin, the first in 1846, whose work was rejected, the 
second in 1847. In the 1846 convention of one hundred 
and thirty-four delegates, twenty-nine were known to 
be New England men, ten more had New England par- 
ents, and " of the forty-two natives of New York . . . 
many names . . . suggest Puritan origin." * The con- 
vention of 1847 contained sixty-nine delegates, of whom 
twenty-four were from New England, and five more of 
New England origin. Thirty-two men were in both 
bodies and held positions of prominence ; of these four- 
teen were of New England birth or stock.^ Under such 
conditions the outcome as to local government could 
not be doubtful. A law was framed by which each 
county was to have a board of three supervisors, one 
from each district into which the county was to be di- 
vided. These were given charge of the general concerns 
of the county, while the town government was left in- 

' E. B. Usher, " Puritan Influence in Wisconsin," in Proc. of Wis. Hist. 
Soc. for 1898, p. 119. 

2 Ibid. One of these was born in East Haddam, Connecticut, and came 
to Wisconsin from the Western Reserve. He was a Whig, and governor 
of the state in 1861. Others were from New Hampshire, Rhode Island, 
Vermont, and Massachusetts. In the convention of 1846 there were eight 
men of Connecticut birth, eighteen of Vermont, one of New Hampshire, 
one of Rhode Island, one of Maine. Tenney and Atwood, Fathers of Wis- 
consin, 20. Four men were from New Jersey. 

In the convention of 1847, nine men were of Connecticut birth, six of 
Massachusetts, five of Vermont, three of New Hampshire, one of Maine. 
Jbid., 21. 



240 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

tact. To-day Wisconsin has three supervisors who cor- 
respond in their duties to the New England selectmen/ 

Racine County is a typical New England region in 
Wisconsin, for it was from an early day a favorite with 
settlers from the East. Its original pioneer of 1835 was 
born in Chatham, Massachusetts ; within a year after his 
arrival hundreds of actual settlers had begun log cabins 
near his own. Several of the newcomers were from 
Derby, Connecticut ; within sixteen years others had 
come from every New England state, except Rhode 
Island, though some had sojourned for a time in New 
York and had been swept on toward the Mississippi by 
the outgoing tide of emigration. One of the earliest 
arrivals had been born in Burlington, Vermont ; he had 
lived in New York and Pennsylvania, then in Illinois, 
and in 1835 took up his permanent abode in Racine, 
having doubtless had enough of pioneering.^ 

To show how like the settlement of New York, Ohio, 
and Michigan is the beginning of Wisconsin, it is only 
necessary to tell the story of the founding of Beloit.^ 
Here, as in most other Wisconsin towns, the pioneers 

1 Bemis, " Local Government in Michigan and the Northwest," in Johns 
Hopkins University Studies, i, no. 5, p. 17. 

^ Hist, of Racine and Kenosha Counties, 567. In Racine County mingled 
arrivals from Bennington, Tunbridge, and Brattleboro, Vermont ; from 
Sunderland, Royalstou, Westford, Sandisfield, Greenwich, Williamstown, 
Ashfield, Berkshire County, and Monson, Massachusetts ; Londonderry 
and Deerfield, New Hampshire ; Cheshire, Bristol, and Colebrook, Con- 
necticut ; Boothbay and Dexter, Maine. See ibid., 567-629. This is but 
one of dozens of counties which give the same mixture from all over 
New England ; the examples might be multiplied indefinitely. 

3 H. M. Whitney, "The settlement of Beloit," in Proc. of Wis. Hist. 
Soc. for 1898, 129-136. The following paragraphs follow his little sketch 
very closely. 



THE NEW ENGLANDERS AS STATE BUILDERS 241 

came with the intention of staying. They were not the 
restless sort who came to settle temporarily, expecting 
to sell later at a higher price, and move on to Minne- 
sota or to Dakota, there to repeat the toil and privation, 
the hardship and frequent disappointment of the ear- 
liest pioneer in the wilderness. Such emigrants had 
passed by the site of Beloit, and turned their eyes to 
other fields. 

Twelve men in the village of Colebrook, New Hamp- 
shire, banded together in October, 1836, to form the 
"New England Emigrating Company," with one Dr. 
Horace White as their agent. Determined to move to 
the West, they sent Dr. White ahead to select for the 
company a new home in Wisconsin. The level fields, the 
water power of Turtle Creek, the "unlimited gravel" 
of the country about Beloit fixed the site of the in- 
tended village and farms, and here Dr. White made the 
purchase for his company. By the middle of the next 
summer the colonists were on the ground, and were 
beginning to build homes and cultivate fields. Besides 
the Colebrook settlers, six families came from Bedford, 
New Hampshire, doubtless because they had heard of 
the purpose of Dr. White's company from their fellow 
townswoman, Mrs. White. 

Professor Whitney, in his sketch of Beloit, brings 
out the practical, hard-headed business sense of these 
pioneers ; he tells how they looked about for a location 
which would prosper with the rest of the region ; he 
says they knew "the moral value of ha\ang gravel 
under their feet," and they realized the necessity of 
getting good land. They saw, too, the advantage of 



242 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

having a quarry and good oak trees on their tract. They 
had come from New Hampshire to better their condi- 
tion, to give perchance to their children advantages 
which would have been beyond their purse had they 
stayed upon the stubborn soil of New Hampshire. More- 
over, the whole Rock River valley has " a New England 
look," and that made them feel at home immediately. 

They planted their village in 1838, and laid out wide 
streets which to-day remind the traveler instantly of a 
town in the heart of New England ; " College Street " 
was the name they gave one of the choicest, for they in- 
tended from the first to have a college as soon as they could. 
They were of the stock which sees the school go hand 
in hand with the church, and far from the one college 
in New Hampshire, they determined to plant another at 
their very doors. Beloit College is a memorial of the 
lofty ideals of these Colebrook emigrants. In its devel- 
opment the college has followed more closely the lines 
of organization and administration of Yale than those 
of Dartmouth ; its presidents and many of its professors 
have been from the Connecticut institution. But it is a 
Congregational and a New England product, as is Dart- 
mouth, and a lasting symbol of the vision of its found- 
ers, who dreamed from the first that a Christian college 
should find its place in their frontier home, to perpet- 
uate the Puritan tradition and the Puritan ideal. 

The colonists had brought a deacon in their company, 
and as soon as they arrived they began to hold services in 
a kitchen of one of the farmhouses, all the congregation 
arriving in ox-wagons on Sunday morning. When they 
were ready to build a church, they bought the shingles 



THE NEW ENGLANDERS AS STATE BUILDERS 243 

in Racine on credit, hauling them overland with an ox- 
team ; " and thej honestly paid for the shingles in the 
spring." ^ When the Congregationalists of Madison be- 
gan to build a church themselves, the Beloit pioneers, 
as yet hardly out of the log-cabin stage of their history, 
gave $50 to help their neighbors. The great tenacity 
of purpose of these colonists, their lofty ideals of 
religion, education, and state-building, — these have 
left an impress upon Wisconsin which none can mistake. 
New England settlement is ever the same, whether it 
is found on the Mohawk, or on the banks of the Wis- 
consin. Hereon the frontier, — "wherever . . . a . . . 
number of Eastern emigrants settled together in the state 
they started at once a school." ^ There were in 1836 
eight little private schools in the territory, with 215 
pupils, exclusive of the schools in Milwaukee, Kenosha, 
and Sheboygan. After 1837 Wisconsin took her school 
code almost bodily from Michigan ; it is to-day a very 
close reproduction of the Michigan system, with a few 
additions from New York.^ The public school system, 
with the state university at the top, and with the nor- 
mal schools for the training of teachers for the lower 
schools, — all this is like Michigan.* 

* " The church they built was the most stately of the three Congrega- 
tional churches existing in Wisconsin in 1844, — so stately, indeed, that it 
got into two editions of the American Encyclopedia." — H. M. Whitney, 
" The Settlement of Beloit," in Proc. of Wis. Hist. Soc. for 1898, 134. 

* W. C. Whitford, " Early History of Education in Wisconsin," in Coll. 
of Wis. Hist. Soc, V, 335. 

3 Ibid., 337-344. 

* The normal schools are largely the work of a Connecticut man who 
came to Wisconsin from New York. Usher, Puritan Influence, 121. 



244 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

Wherever a large proportion of New England emi- 
grants is found, there one is certain to come upon Congre- 
gational churches. Indeed, in going over the Western 
States, one can almost locate New England people by 
the presence of Congregational churches. Wisconsin 
proves the rule; a few typical churches will tell the 
story of many. When the congregation of Troy, in 
Walworth County, was gathered in 1839, it was made 
up of six persons from North Hadley and two from 
Roxbury, Massachusetts.^ The First Congregational 
Church of Janesville had fifteen charter members, eleven 
of whom came from New England ; another had moved 
from Athens, Pennsylvania, but came of Plainfield, Con- 
necticut, stock.^ The Madison church had eight pastors 
in the half -century following its organization in 1840 ; 
of these, seven were born in New England.^ The Emer- 
ald Grove congregation had fourteen charter members, 
six of whom were born in Vermont j ^ while the Prairie 
church with eighteen members numbered five from 
Vermont and two from Connecticut.^ Of the four dea- 
cons in the Bloomington church, one was born in Ston- 
ington, Connecticut ; three were from Vermont, — Hart- 

1 Manuscript report of the formation of the Congregational Church of 
Troy, among the Dwinnell Papers in the Library of the Wisconsin Histori- 
cal Society. 

2 S. P. Wilder, " Hist, of the Congregational Church," in Fiftieth Anni- 
versary of the First Cong. Church of Janesville, 43. Also ibid., " Our Charter 
Members," 47-51. 

^ F. J. Lamb, "Former Pastors," in Fiftieth Anniversary of the First 
Cong. Church of Madison, 93 S. 

* Rev. R. L. Cheney, " Charter Membership," in the Fiftieth AnniveV' 
sary of the Emerald Grove Church, 30. 

' Rev. R. L. Cheney, " Charter Members," uj -Prairie Church, 17. 



THE NEW ENGLANDERS AS STATE BUILDERS 245 

ford, Derby, and Jericho. The Beloit church would, of 
course, be almost wholly a New England product : of its 
twenty-four members, seven were from Colebrook, and 
three from Groton, New Hampshire ; two from Hartland 
and three from Milton, Vermont; two from Maine; one 
each from Enfield, Connecticut, and Providence, Rhode 
Island/ The Presbyterian churches also show a large 
New England and New York membership, as is to be 
expected, and are quite as strong and as numerous as 
the Congregational organizations. 

Into the building of a state go always the characters 
of those men who are most prominent in its history, — 
as governors, judges, legislators, or men of business. A 
glance at some whose names are bound up with the story 
of the institutions, political and commercial, which they 
have builded, will serve to illustrate what has gone be- 
fore as to the influence exerted by New England upon 
this Western state. 

Of the eighteen governors of Wisconsin four were 
born in Connecticut, one in Massachusetts ; another was 
of Connecticut parentage, and one of Massachusetts 
stock, while yet another came of Puritan ancestry.^ Two 
Vermont men have been judges of the Supreme Court 
of the state, four more have been circuit judges, as have 
three Maine emigrants and one from Massachusetts. 
There have been eleven United States senators, — four 
from Vermont, and one from Maine, while two came 
of New England stock. The proneness of the Ver- 

^ Rev. L. D. Mears, " Hist. Address," in Services at the Fiftieth Anniver- 
sary of the First Congregational Church, Beloit, Wis., pp. 27, 28. 
2 Usher, Puritan Influence in Wisconsin, 121, 122. 



246 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

monter to go into politics is illustrated by the fact that 
every man of prominence connected with the state or- 
y^anization of the Republican party in 1880 in Wiscon- 
sin was a Vermonter, from Senator Spooner down. Six 
state superintendents of schools have been either New 
England men or the children of such parents. New 
Englanders built the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul 
Railroad, as they did three others in the state. ^ From 
the beginning of Wisconsin's history as a state, its in- 
stitutions " have been dominated by Americans of the 
Puritan seed." ^ 

Into the making of Wisconsin, then, has gone much 
of New England practice and tradition, part of it 
brought directly from the old states on the coast, more 
of it from western New York, but aU of it a Puritan 
heritage, tempered by frontier and wilderness conditions. 
The schools, the churches, the local institutions of the 
state all show their origin, whether they were copied 
directly from Massachusetts or Connecticut, or had been 
altered in New York or Michigan on their way to shape 
another commonwealth planned on the same lines. The 
great immigrations of foreigners have not changed 
the fundamental institutions of the state, though they 
have given a different character to its population. There 
never can be erased the sturdy independence, the demo- 
cratic spirit, the deep moral purpose of the pioneers 

» Usher, Puritan Influence in Wisconsin, 123-126. Two are great sys- 
tems, — the Wisconsin Central, the Omaha system ; while a third is the 
Green Bay R. R. The president of the Milwaukee and Mississippi R. R. 
was a native of Vermont, the manager of the C, M. & St. P. R. R. wa3 
a New Hampshire boy. 

Ibid., 127. See map opposite, and frontispiece. 



9f) Lonzituilt West 86 from Greenwich 82 



New England Settlement 

In the old 
Northwest Territory 

1850 

I I New England Settlement 
"~-> L^ [ I All Other Settlement 




THE NEW ENGLANDERS AS STATE BUILDERS 247 

who made Wisconsin in its early years a modified New 
England. 

One feels in passing through the Michigan and Wis- 
consin towns the kinship of the two states to each other, 
to northern Illinois, to northern Ohio, and to western 
New York ; that kinship has come, it is believed, through 
their common heritage of ideals and ideas, drawn from 
the same source, — the home of the Puritans. Settled 
by the same stock, built by the same sort of pioneers, 
their resemblance to each other is no accident, no hap- 
hazard similarity. They represent a New England whose 
history is shaped and moulded on the lines of the old. 
New England history is incomplete when it takes up the 
story of but six states ; it will be finished only when it 
tells the tale of a greater New England extended to the 
Mississippi.^ 

* Nor does it stop with the Mississippi. During the later years of this 
study, from about 1840 to 1865, people from New England were moving 
in a steady stream (and an increasingly large one) to Minnesota, Iowa, 
Kansas, Oregon, and Washington. Worthington, Minnesota, was settled 
by a colony somewhat like those we have examined; Lawrence, Kansas, 
is a New England town, as is Grinnell, Iowa. Far out in the Willamette 
Valley is Whitman College, Congregational to the core. Only with a study 
of emigration to the Pacific Coast can the story of " greater New Eng- 
land " be complete. 



248 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 

For Michigan, the great source of information is the Pioneer Collections, 
issued by the Pioneer Society of Michigan (34 vols., Lansing, 1877-1906). 
The series is admirably edited, and contains aU sorts of information, — 
biographical, historical, and statistical. To supplement the biographical 
material found in these collections, there is a large volume of a popular 
character in a series called "American Biographies," — Representative 
Men of Michigan (Cincinnati, 1878). The sketches given here afford a 
means of identifying men of New England stock. 

There are four general histories of Michigan : James V. Campbell has 
given the political phase especial prominence in the Outlines of the Politi- 
cal History of Michigan (Detroit, 1876) ; there are many anecdotes and 
local sketches in Silas Farmer's History of Detroit and Michigan (Detroit, 
1884) ; a good brief history is in the American Commonwealth Series, by 
Judge T. M. Cooley, entitled Michigan ; and lastly, the work of J. H. 
Lanman, History of Michigan (New York, 1839) is good as far as it goes. 

Some of the better county histories are as follows : Samuel W. Durant, 
History of Ingham and Eaton Counties (Philadelphia, 1880) ; Crisfield 
Johnson, History of Hillsdale County (Philadelphia, 1879) ; T. E. Wing, 
editor, History of Monroe County (New York, 1890) ; and those for whom 
no one assumes the sponsorship, — History of Berrien and Van Buren 
Counties, History of St. Clair County, and History of Washtenaw County. 

Professor A. C. McLaughlin prepared the History of Higher Education 
in Michigan, Circular no. 4 in a series for the Bureau of Education at 
Washington dealing with the subject in various states. Edward W. M. 
Bemis prepared a study on Local Government in Michigan and the North- 
west, in the Johns Hopkins University " Studies in History and Political 
Science," March, 1883. It is not so thorough as Dr. Shaw's study in the 
same series on Illinois. 

For Wisconsin, there is a series corresponding to the Michigan Pioneer 
Society Collections, issued by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 
and called the Collections of the Wiscotisin State Historical Society (18 vols., 
Madison, 1855-1908). The editing here is admirable. There are also 
Proceedings of the Society, in 12 vols., Madison, 1875-1908, and Reports 
(1875-1908, 101 vols.), containing many short articles of value. H. A. 
Tenney and David Atwood have done signal service in preparing the 
Memorial Record of the Fathers of Wisconsin. 

In county histories, many were used for the maps which cannot be 



THE NEW ENGLANDERS AS STATE BUILDERS 249 

cited here ; but Miss H. M. Bingham's History of Green County (Milwau- 
kee, 1877) and C. W. Butterfield's edition of a History of Racine and 
Kenosha Counties (Chicago, 1879) proved especially helpful. W. H. C. 
Folsom's Fifty Years in the Northwest (St. Paul, 1888) gives the experiences 
of an early settler. 

There are several histories of individual churches which are of value : 
Rev. R. L. Cheney in " The Charter Members," bound in a memorial 
of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Old Blake's Prairie Church; F. J. Lamb, 
"Former Pastors of the Church," in the Fiftieth Anniversary of the First 
Congregational Church of Madison; Rev. L. D. Mears, " Historical Ad- 
dress " in Services at the Fiftieth Anniversary of the First Congregational 
Church of Beloit ; and S. P. Wilder, *' History," in the Fiftieth Anniversary 
of the First Congregational Church of Janesville — all these are suggestive. 

These are but a few books and pamphlets of the vast collection of 
material for Western history stored in the library of the State Historical 
Society of Wisconsin at Madison. 

Finally, reference ought to be made to the volumes prepared by the 
directors of the United States Census for 1870 (which contain statistics 
of 1790 to 1870 inclusive), 1880, 1890, and 1900, where figures and maps 
are to be found. The Blue Books of various states give information as to 
prominent men in politics and public life. 



CHAPTER X 

TWO CENTURIES AND A HALF OF NEW ENGLAND 
PIONEERING 

1620-1865 

The westward march of the Puritan and his descend- 
ants has now been traced for two hundred and fifty 
years, — not always completely, sometimes merely in 
broad outline ; but an attempt has been made to show 
where New England men and women have gone to plant 
towns, to build states, to help weld the American nation.* 
Nor has the purely formal side of the actual movement 
of population alone been studied ; the presence of a 
number of New England people in New Jersey or in 
Wisconsin would of itself mean nothing. Wherever 
Puritan blood has gone, Puritan traditions have been 
carried, — that is the essential thing to note. There- 
fore, the Influence these transplanted Englishmen have 
exerted, the Institutions they have wrought, the char- 
acter ingrained by inheritance and altered by environ- 
ment which differentiates them from any other element 
in the United States, — all these are material for the 
student who notes the growth of the American nation 
from its small beginnings to its stature to-day. 

As the frontier has moved to the West, so the Puritan 
has marched, his log cabin marking for two centuries 

* See frontispiece, for New England settlement east of the Mississippi 
Kiver to 1860. 



TWO CENTURIES AND A HALF OF PIONEERING 251 

the edge of civilization. At first his villages were but 
fishing or farming hamlets, scattered along the Atlantic 
coast; by degrees, actuated by a desire to better his 
material condition through enlarged farms or more ex- 
tended fur-trade with the Indians, or by unrest which 
social, religious, or pohtical restraint produced, the set- 
tler moved inland with his family and his neighbors. 
Certain conditions bound him down in his choice of a 
new home : he must build his cabin near a river, for the 
water-courses supplied the only means of transportation 
for himself and his goods ; he must seek out the best 
lands available, and these were, so far as New England 
was concerned, the intervale lands along the rivers; 
lastly, he must (in so far as he could) keep out of the 
way of hostile Indians. Hence the first settlements were 
stretched in a reasonably compact manner along the 
coast, and up the larger water-courses. 

Famiharity with frontier conditions bred daring and 
unrest ; the men and the women who had been pioneers 
once were not afraid to brave the wilderness again, and 
consequently dissatisfaction with the iron rule of Massa- 
chusetts Bay might send one hundred families to the 
Connecticut River, or a church quarrel might cause 
thirty more to remove to Cape Cod. It was this fear- 
lessness (combined, to be sure, with other motives) which 
made it possible for emigrants to betake themselves to 
Newark and other New Jersey towns as well as to those 
upon Long Island. 

From 1660 down to the years just preceding the 
Revolution, expansion radiated from the centres estab- 
lished in the forty years preceding the Restoration. 



252 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

Inland from the coast, following up the rivers, keeping 
close together at times when the French and Indians 
threatened every isolated settlement, new farms were 
laid out and new towns planted. When all the best land 
had been taken, later comers had to be content with 
poorer tracts, till all was occupied. Now and then the 
frontier line was thrust back by war, but it advanced 
beyond its former limit when peace was restored, and 
the movement after the peace of Utrecht was upon the 
whole a steady advance. It was the poorer quality of 
the land that kept central Massachusetts a wilderness 
long after the Connecticut valley was well peopled ; it 
was the insecurity attendant upon a disputed title that 
made the prospective settler pass by the lower counties 
of Vermont and build his log cabin farther north. 
For the New England pioneer was a hard-headed 
man of business ; if he moved to better his condition, 
he did not mean to be balked in his purpose by poor 
judgment at the beginning. By 1770 all the best land 
had been occupied in the three Southern colonies, the 
lower parts of Maine and New Hampshire were filled 
with towns, and the frontier line was being pushed back 
from southern Vermont; while Long Island and New 
Jersey, as well as several counties on either side of the 
Hudson River in New York, had received the overflow 
from New England. 

The impending struggle between the mother country 
and the colonies did not trouble the pioneer ; his wan- 
derings were checked only by actual hostilities. Between 
1760 and 1775 three plans for emigration were formu- 
lated, and two were carried out. The first was the great 



TWO CENTURIES AND A HALF OF PIONEERING 253 

movement to the Wyoming country in northwestern 
Pennsylvania, — a scheme which drew hundreds of set- 
tlers from Connecticut to the new town of Westmore- 
land. The second was the removal of many Nantucket 
Quakers to Guilford County, North Carolina, — an 
instance of a search for good land and congenial reli- 
gious surroundings/ The third was the ill-fated plan 
for the Phineas Lyman colony near Natchez, in which 
at least four hundred Connecticut families were inter- 
ested, for that number removed to the Mississippi coun- 
try; with the opening of the war, many returned to 
their old homes, while others sought new ones in differ- 
ent parts of the South. Certainly the New Englander 
was by this time a seasoned frontiersman, whom no 
wilderness could daunt. 

With the close of the Revolution, the flood of emi- 
gration, pent up during the war, rushed forth, this time 
to central and western New York, to northern and 
western Pennsylvania, and to southern Ohio, as well as 
to the three northern New England States. Now new 
factors altered the situation, for the lands to the west 
were unlike those of the coast states, and the product 
of a year's labor seemed little short of marvelous to 
those who had wrung but a pittance from the stony 
soil of New England. Not only did young men move, 
but older ones as well, lured on by the tales of return- 
ing travelers, by the fascinating prospect of wealth in 
the West, and often also by the innate unrest of the 
Anglo-Saxon. Hardy emigrants swarmed from every 

1 Many Pennsylvania Quakers were moving down the Piedmont plateau 
to the uplands of North Carolina at this time. 



254 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

New England state to the westward, the less venture- 
some ones moving to the North, — to Vermont, Maine, 
and New Hampshire. 

In Ohio the soldier found a new home upon the gov- 
ernment bounty lands, and Revolutionary officers, as 
well as men of the line, established homes at Marietta. 
To the north lay the " Western Reserve," and thither 
flocked thousands of settlers to build a new Connecticut 
upon the shores of Lake Erie. Farther out, the "squat- 
ter " built his home, waiting for the land to be brought 
into the market, that he might purchase a quarter-section 
of the new government tracts which the states had each 
ceded for the welfare of all. The possession by the 
general government of a seemingly inexhaustible supply 
of cheap and fertile land to the west gave an impetus 
to emigration unparalleled in American history up to 
that time. 

From 1781 until 1812 the movement of population 
from New England continued in these channels. After 
the second war with Great Britain, the sons and daugh- 
ters of the Puritans went farther West, into the north- 
ern parts of Indiana and Illinois. Indiana was never a 
favorite stopping-place for the New Englanders, for the 
Southern element was strong here, and the Virginian 
or Kentuckian was apt to confuse the shrewd, unscru- 
pulous "Yankee" peddler of cheap clocks with the 
substantial Connecticut farmer, and to treat the two 
alike. This same hostility between the New England 
toilers of a frontier line working down from the North 
and the Southern farmers building up from the South 
is found in Illinois; it grew until the fourteen northern 



TWO CENTURIES AND A HALF OF PIONEERING 255 

counties were eager to secede to Wisconsin that they 
miofht affiliate with their own kind. From 1816 until 
1840 the movement of emigrants into Indiana took place, 
that into Illinois from about 1825 until 1850. 

In the latter part of this period, from about 1830 
until 1837, the New Englanders were clearing for them- 
selves new homes north of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, 
in Michigan and Wisconsin. Working into the interior 
from the southeast corner of each of these states, for a 
few years the growth of population in all of what had 
been the Northwest Territory went on at once ; after 
1840 Michigan and Wisconsin received most of the new- 
comers. Farther to the west, across the Mississippi, New 
England was contributing hundreds of families to Iowa 
and Minnesota, while a few were already making their 
way across the Rocky Mountains to lay the foundations 
of Washington and Oregon. 

Such has been the actual movement of settlement dur- 
ing these two centuries. What has been the character 
of the emigration? The emigrants have betaken them- 
selves to new homes in three ways : by single families, 
by groups of two or more households, and by whole 
colonies. When families have gone singly, — and this 
was rarely the method for the first half-century, and 
has never been the most popular one, — their influence 
has been exerted only by an especially strong personal- 
ity here and there ; the rest have been lost in some little 
town on the Wabash or the Fox. Where two or three 
households h^^e sfone tog-ether to build cabins in the 
same neighborhood, there New England tradition has 
been preserved, and the influence of Puritan institutions 



256 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

has made itself felt ; state-building in the West has been 
the work of these little bands toiling with their neigh- 
bors from other parts of the United States. But when 
a whole church or a colony has moved out to plant a 
new town, there the character of the settlement has 
remained longest unchanged, and its citizens have con- 
structed what is to all intents and purposes a veritable 
New England town, — church, school, and often a col- 
lege, — far from Massachusetts or Connecticut, in the 
heart of New York or New Jersey, or in an oak clear- 
ing of Michigan or Wisconsin. There are many of these 
towns scattered over the states north of the Ohio and 
its tributaries ; some of them, like Kirkland, Granville, 
Oberlin, Vermontville, Rockford, and Beloit have been 
mentioned, but many more have a more obscure story 
not written as yet. In a number of these towns the old 
tendency to proceed in an orderly and law-abiding fash- 
ion has led to the drawing up of a compact or a consti- 
tution closely resembling those under which the founders 
of Plymouth, Springfield, and many other towns agreed 
to live until some regularly constituted government 
should be set over them. Anglo-Saxon conservatism has 
shown itself very strongly in the survival of the written 
compact. 

When these families or colonies made up their minds 
to move, they did not set out with any vague notion of 
their destination ; they knew exactly where they were 
going, for the way had been traveled before their de- 
parture, and usually the site for their future homes al- 
ready chosen. Certain states and parts of states have 
had a fascination for the Connecticut man, still others 



TWO CENTURIES AND A HALF OF PIONEERING 257 

for the pioneer from Massachusetts, and yet another for 
the Vermont emigrant/ Connecticut settlers have moved 
in largest numbers to Long Island, New Jersey, and 
southern New York east of the Hudson ; they have fol- 
lowed the Housatonic into western Massachusetts, the 
Connecticut into New Hampshire and Vermont ; turn- 
ing their faces westward, they have moved by hundreds 
into northwestern Pennsylvania and into central and 
western New York ; by thousands they have emigrated 
to their own Western Reserve and to Michigan. Far 
from remaining in the " land of steady habits," the 
former inhabitants of Connecticut towns are found from 
one end of the United States to the other.^ 

* No reason can be assigned for this, so far as the writer knows, save 
the desire to live in the neighborhood of other pioneers from the same 
region in the East. No particular kind of soil seems to attract the Ver- 
monter any more than the Massachusetts man ; no sort of business seems 
to draw one here and another there. Stories told by an emigrant who has 
gone back to visit the old home on the coast have led again and again to 
removals to the region described by the wanderer. The tendency to set- 
tle together is there, — just why, it is impossible to say. 

' B. C. Steiner, in his History of Guilford, Connecticut, has made an 
interesting and valuable study of the movement of emigrants from that 
one town. Beginning with the first removals to Branford in 1644, he 
traces settlers in 1663-64 to Killingworth, to Saybrook, and to Newark, 
New Jersey ; in 1700, to Durham ; in the next quarter-century, to Mid- 
dlefield and Westfield ; about 1750, to Litchfield, Goshen, Salisbury, and 
Canaan. Between 1760 and the end of the Revolution, he has found the 
movement taking a turn northward, to settle Richmond and Stockbridge 
in western Massachusetts, to begin Guilford, Vermont, and to fill up 
Chittenden County in the same state. After the Revolution, others went 
to Claremont and Charlestown, New Hampshire, and to Greenville, New 
York. Early in the nineteenth century, some settled at Paris, Westmore- 
land, and Verona in New York, in the Connecticut Western Reserve, in 
other parts of Ohio, and, about 1830, at Fairfield and other Illinois towns. 
This close study simply bears out the deductions made above for the 



258 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

Massachusetts has sent pioneers to Maine, New Hamp- 
shire, Vermont, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan and Wiscon- 
sin; almost none to Pennsylvania and Indiana.* Rhode 

whole state. See B. C. Steiner, History of Guilford, 139. E. D. Larned's 
Hist, of Windham County, ii, 586, 587, gives Wyoming, Vermont, New 
Hampshire, western Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, and the territories 
westward as the destinations of emigrants from that county, adding to the 
list a few who have gone to Maryland, North Carolina, and New Orleans. 
Bowen's Woodstock, p. 58, gives the destination of former inhabitants of 
Woodstock as Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, and 
Ohio ; and adds that " nowadays, nearly every state has representatives of 
this town." F. Atwater (^Hist. of Plymouth, Conn., 437) gives descendants 
from that town who live in Tecumseh, Nebraska, and in McGregor, Iowa. 
» A celebration held in Granville, Massachusetts, in 1845, gave an op- 
portunity for the preparation of statistics as to the residence of emigrants 
from Granville, living in that year : 286 emigrants were distributed as 
follows : — 

Ohio (in 27 towns, mostly in northern Ohio) 67 

New York (in 27 towns, in all parts of the state) .... 67 
Massachusetts (in 11 towns, mostly in the western part) . 57 
Connecticut (in 12 towns, mostly in the northwestern part) 36 

Illinois (in 7 towns, in the northern part) 11 

Wisconsin (in 4 towns) 6 

Michigan (in 4 towns) 5 

Indiana (in 2 towns) 4 

Vermont 4 

Pennsylvania 3 

Khode Island 3 

Louisiana 3 

Iowa 3 

New Jersey 3 

Florida 2 

Alabama 2 

Missouri 2 

New Hampshire 1 

District of Columbia 1 

South America 1 

See Granville Jubilee, 127-135. 

Weymouth has sent representatives just as indicated in the text 



TWO CENTURIES AND A HALF OF PIONEERING 259 

Island is represented in all the states, but not by great 
numbers anywhere.^ Maine settlers have moved least of 
all, probably because there have always been vacant 
lands in their own state, at low prices, and within easy 
distance.^ New Hampshire has sent most of her emi- 
grants to New York, but many have gone to Ohio and 
to Illinois also.^ Vermont people, mostly descendants 
from Connecticut stock, have shown the same migratory 
spirit as their ancestors, and have been the great " mov- 
ers"; in New York they are more numerous than in any 
other state, but they are represented in goodly numbers 
in Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin/ The great 
exodus from New York into Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, 
and Wisconsin, is probably largely the movement of 
New England stock, in the second or third generation. 
What factors have operated to send inhabitants to 
the frontier ? Over and over again the search for cheap 
and fertile land has been most potent, for until after 
the Revolution the chief business of all the colonial in- 
habitants save those in the coast towns was connected 
in some way with agriculture. When the best land in 
New England had been taken, it became necessary to 

above. See Gilbert Nash, " Weymouth," in Hist, of Norfolk Co., 566. 
Roxbury is said to have been the mother of fifteen towns in the United 
States. See Bowen, Woodstock, 11. 

* See Census Reports for 1850 and 1860, in Appendix B. Note the small 
number for New Jersey, Indiana, and Wisconsin. 

' Ibid. Note the small number for Indiana and Michigan. 
3 Ihid. 

* Ihid. Note that Vermont stands third in number of settlers that 
New England contributed to New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio ; first in 
Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. See, also, settlement of Ver- 
monters in Wisconsin by counties, in Appendix C. 



260 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

remove to some more productive region, or else to 
change one's occupation, — a thing not so easy of 
accomplishment a hundred years ago as it is to-day. 
Letters sent back by a Hugh White, telling of the mar- 
velous yield of his farm in central New York, proved 
irresistible to his former Connecticut neighbors, and 
out to Whitesboro and its vicinity they moved, that 
they, too, might profit by the extraordinary prodigality 
of nature. The prairies of Illinois and Wisconsin were 
far preferable to a stony, hilly patch of ground in the 
" Granite State," when once their attractions had been 
set forth in gazetteer and guide-book/ To obtain a 
farm of a goodly size, — that has been the object of the 
majority of emigrants from the beginning. 

Inseparably connected with the search for land there 
has often been discontent with existing conditions, 
— social, economic, religious, and political. When a 
church quarrel arose, what need was there to yield or 
to compromise, when the disgruntled minority could 
have its will in another region not far away? There 
was no necessity for yielding to the will of a majority 
with which one did not agree when wide stretches of 
unoccupied land were inviting settlers who could do as 
they pleased. With this assurance, excessive independ- 
ence and assertive individuality needed no curb, for 
there was room for all ideas, political and social. The 
contented, the prosperous, the conservative, — these 

* The number of these guide-books and gazetteers, such as Peck's, 
which were issued from 1830 to 1850 is astonishing, and their influence 
in attracting settlers to the West must have been great. Every detail of 
expense by canal, steamboat, and stage is there, with minute descriptions 
of infant settlements in need of farmers and merchants. 



TWO CENTURIES AND A HALF OF PIONEERING 261 

remained in the old town ; the discontented, the poor, 
the radical, — all such elements moved to the frontier. 
Whether the discontent was for social, political, or 
religious conditions, the same idea underlay it all ; and 
that idea was that greater advantages might be gained 
for one's self and for one's children in the new home than 
in the old. Ambitious in a land where they saw their work 
grow under their hands, it was but natural that the goal 
for the pioneers should be the gaining of wealth which 
should place their children at least one round farther 
up on the social ladder than their fathers had been. 
Yet even in their ambition, the frontiersmen from New 
England have not been unmindful of the moral and 
religious side of life, for that has always been most 
firmly ingrained and most thoroughly characteristic of 
the Puritan and his descendants. Therefore, the emi- 
grants carried with them their school, their church, and 
their town-meeting ; certain that their own institutions 
were best, backed by their conviction of their own keen- 
ness of judgment, aided by the conservatism which 
clings to what it knows by experience is good, they 
insisted upon the adoption of their traditional institu- 
tions in the newer states of the West. In the adoption, 
though, the church, the school, and the town-meeting 
must needs undergo change; the church must become 
more liberal, it must take on the Presbyterian form if 
that would insure its growth ; it must be divorced from 
politics, since one reason for the removal to the frontier 
had often been the union of church and state upon the 
coast. Far from escaping from the majority rule, the 
pioneer had become subject to it anewj but it was 



262 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

now his majority, and he could afford to yield to gain 
his ends. The school had to change also. Separation of 
the sexes had been the rule in New England ; coeduca- 
tion became the habit of the West. Partly due to lack 
of funds, partly perhaps owing to the intense feeling of 
equality not only between man and man, but between 
man and woman, the coeducational plan became the cus- 
tom for the Western States. It was not always adopted 
willingly, for conservatism and tradition in such matters 
die hard ; but in the end a shrewd business sense dic- 
tated the policy, and it won.^ 

Such are some phases of the influence of the older 
civilization upon the new; but there has been also a 
reaction whereby the older civilization has in its turn 
been altered by the new which it had helped to shape. 
The frontier demanded recognition ; and it had its way. 
Beginning with insignificant quarrels between settlers 
and non-resident proprietors, wh^re the former demanded 
the advantages of roads and bridges which they had 
enjoyed in the older towns and were now too poor to 

1 In 1842 the question of the separation of the sexes in the public 
schools arose in Rochester, New York. It was argued that the old plan 
of having boys and girls go to separate schools interfered with grading 
and classifying pupils, and required an unnecessary number of instructors. 
On the other hand, the prejudice against " mixed schools " was strong 
among the New England element which made up the majority of Roches- 
ter inhabitants. In 1849-50 the old district system was abolished, and all 
educational matters were, by the new city charter, left to the common 
council. An ordinance was passed requiring that all pupils be seated, 
classified, and taught without regard to sex. Quite a number of pupils were 
withdrawn from school, but after a year or two discussion ceased, and the 
ordinance was generally accepted. See Ellis, " Hist, of Rochester Public 
Schools," in Pub. of Roch. Hist. Soc, i, 74, 75. Neither the University of 
Wisconsin nor that of Michigan was made coeducational without a struggle. 



TWO CENTURIES AND A HALF OF PIONEERING 263 

provide for themselves, the divergence of views grew 
wider. In the matter of roads and bridges, it seemed to 
the pioneer that every property owner should help in 
paying for public works, and that the whole expense 
should not be borne by the resident farmer. He com- 
plained first to the proprietors, then to the legislature ; 
and he frequently won his case.^ 

Going beyond the confines of a single town, the 
whole frontier sometimes rose in what it considered 
righteous indignation against a conservative and arro- 
gant coast population. The story of the adoption of the 
Massachusetts constitution will illustrate such a contest.^ 
In 1778-79 the county of Berkshire, which had been set- 
tled mostly from Connecticut towns, was in almost open 
rebellion against the state of Massachusetts, on the 
matter of admitting the authority of the General Court 
and the judicial courts as well. The question had arisen 
over the adoption of a constitution, and "for other rea- 
sons to be enumerated," it was argued that the laws of 
the state ought not to operate in that town.^ Richmond 

' See the case of Westminster settlers vs. proprietors, given by Hey- 
wood, " Westminster," in Hist, of Worcester Co., ii, 1148. Also complaint 
of the inhabitants of Deering, New Hampshire, against proprietors who 
refused to help build a meeting-house and pay for a lot for the minister. 
See Hammond, Town Papers, xi, 495. Also, the case of Dorchester, in ibid., 
xi, 501. Also the case brought before the legislature for settlement of a 
dispute between proprietors and settlers in Bartlett. See ibid., xi, 161, 162. 

2 The material for this paragraph has been obtained from a manuscript 
thesis, " The Struggle for the Constitution in Massachusetts," by Dr. F. E. 
Haynes, in the Harvard College Library, pp. 165-183. 

8 Great Barrington Town Records, Nov. 16, 1778, cited by Dr. Haynes, 
166. The method of representation was considered defective, and the 
western towns, tenacious of the rights they believed were theirs, protested 
thus in typical frontier fashion. 



264 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

protested in no uncertain way against laws established 
on what was considered an uncertain basis.^ Lenox 
voted that there was in Massachusetts no constitution 
which controlled the inhabitants of that town, and pe- 
titioned the General Court to be allowed to be set off to 
be a part of a neighboring state.^ The northern towns 
of the county were the most hostile to the General 
Court; coercion would probably have been fatal to any 
future harmony for the new state, and would perhaps 
have meant dismemberment.^ From 1774 to 1780 the 
civil authority was really helpless as far as Berkshire 
County was concerned, the real power being exercised 
by each town without regard to its neighbors. In 1778 
the courts were closed, while Richmond turned over the 
punishment of criminals to the selectmen.* Only in 
1780, when a constitution had been formed by a con- 
vention elected for that express purpose, and therefore 
drawn up by the people themselves, were the demands 
of the Berkshire radicals on the one hand and the Essex 
conservatives on the other harmonized, and the new con- 
stitution adopted.^ 

But another portion of the Massachusetts frontier 
protested against " Essex conservatism " in the years 
following the adoption of this very constitution. In 

1 RicTimmd Town Records, Nov. 12 and 16, 1778. Cited ibid., 168. Dr. 
Haynes says the vote of Nov. 12 was 31 to 21, of Nov. 16, 24 to 13. 

2 Lenox Town Records, Feb. 8, 1779. Cited ibid., 169, 171. 
8 Ibid., 171, 172. 

* Ibid., 176-183. 

* Ibid., 264-266. Dr. Haynes says, ** Anglo-Saxon tradition, Berkshire 
democracy, and Essex conservatism gave us the venerable constitution of 
1780." 



TWO CENTURIES AND A HALF OF PIONEERING 265 

1785 discussion in Maine over its establishment as an 
independent state was the chief theme of political dis- 
course. Not only was the discussion between Maine as 
the frontier and Massachusetts as the conservative coast, 
but there was division within the borders of Maine 
itself between office-holders and the people at large. 
The first newspaper in Maine — the "Falmouth Ga- 
zette." — was established to further the proposed separa- 
tion, the first number appearing on New Year's Day, 
1785. A list of grievances drawn up by a committee of 
the convention assembled for discussion contain some 
typical frontier complaints : " The interests of these 
three counties [York, Cumberland, and Lincoln] are 
different from those of Massachusetts, and therefore, 
they can never be fully understood by her, nor will they 
for the same reason ever be duly attended to and pro- 
moted. . . ." 

" The seat of the government is at a distance, the 
General Court large, and its business multifarious and 
perplexing ; so that the petitioners and suitors in 
their journies, as well as in delays, have to suffer many 
and great inconveniences, expenses, and discourage- 
ments. . . ." 

" The present regulations of trade operate unequally 
and unjustly toward these Counties ; for they tend to 
depress the price of lumber. . . ." 

" A great part of the inhabitants of these Counties 
are deprived of representation in the popular branch 
of the Legislature, where all the money-bills origi- 
nate. . . ." 

The document ends with complaints of unjust excise 



266 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

and impost taxes. Here, then, is quite as typical a com- 
plaint as the ones of which it is distinctly reminiscent, 
— those documents of the whole colonial frontier di- 
rected against the conservative British Parliament/ 

Another instance may be cited to illustrate a some- 
what different side of the friction between frontier and 
coast.^ In 1786 fifty towns of Hampshire County, Mas- 
sachusetts, drew up a list of grievances, among which 
was one complaining of the mode of representation then 
in operation ; another, " that all the civil officers of gov- 
ernment " were not elected annually by the representa- 
tives of the people assembled in General Court ; a third, 
that the present mode of taxation operated unequally be- 
tween polls and estates, and between the landed and the 
mercantile interests ; a fourth, that the General Court 
sat at Boston.^ The first outbreak of sharp rebellion in 
1786 occurred at Northampton, in western Massachu- 
setts,^ but the rising was not confined by any means to 
that portion of the state. ^ In New Hampshire the more 
conservative settled parts were opposed to paper money ; 
whereas the more radical rural population demanded it.® 
Vermont went through a similar experience ; ^ — in fact 

1 This trouble in Maine is given quite fully in Williamson's History of 
Maine, ii, 521-527 (edition of 1832). 

* The material for this paragraph is taken from a manuscript thesis in 
Harvard College Library, by Dr. J. P. Warren, on Shay^s Rebellion. 

3 Massachusetts Centinel, Sept. 9, 1786, cited by Dr. Warren, 81, 82. 
There are thirteen grievances enumerated ; those not mentioned above 
deal with complaints concerning the operations of courts and lawyers, etc. 

* Ibid., 89. 
5 Ibid., 108. 

» Ibid., App. iii, 128-135. 
' Ibid., 137, 138. 



TWO CENTURIES AND A HALF OF PIONEERING 267 

the frontier, which has always had naive ideas on finance 
in general, demanded paper money as the panacea for 
all economic ills. The exception is Rhode Island, whose 
conservative class was too small to win the day for a 
sound currency as the mercantile interests of Massachu- 
setts did, in spite of the opposition which had crystal- 
lized in " Shay's Rebellion." 

After the election of Thomas Jefferson to the presi- 
dency, the reaction in New England against clerical 
control manifested itself in no uncertain manner. The 
dissenting sects, religious and political, who had resented 
the "machine" management of state government by 
the Congregational Church and its members for a long 
time, now caused an upheaval; and it was easily ascer- 
tained that these opponents of the old order of things 
were from the outlying, democratic districts, — north- 
western Connecticut, western Massachusetts, western 
New Hampshire, and Vermont. From their brethren and 
neighbors who had removed to New York or to Ohio, 
they had learned that manhood suffrage and the divorce 
of state affairs from clerical control were no dream, but 
might be made a reality. It took time to accomphsh 
their purpose ; but in the end the frontier won, and the 
extension of the franchise followed, together with the 
fall of the Congregational Church as a political power. 
The decline of the Federalist party, the Dartmouth Col- 
lege case, many of the events of the first twenty years 
of the nineteenth century, show the reaction in New 
England caused by the demands of the new and the old 
frontier. 

In 1820 Clay and Calhoun, the former a radical Ken- 



268 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

tuckian of pioneer stock, used the frontier standard of 
democracy as a measure of John Quincy Adams's fitness 
for the presidency. Though Adams was neither a Con- 
gregationaHst nor a Federalist, he represented some of 
the ideas for which Congregationalism and Federalism 
had stood, and astute politicians saw that he could not 
appeal to the democratic elements of his native New 
England, to say nothing of the failure certain to come 
if his name were broached as that of a possible president 
for the whole nation. The administration of Adams was 
a failure because of the lack of sympathy between him 
and the people of the whole country save a remnant of 
the more conservative New Englanders.* He went out 
of office because of the triumph of the frontier, repre- 
sented in Andrew Jackson. The same elements which, 
speaking by the voice of Henry Clay, had forced the 
War of 1812 upon reluctant conservatives like Madison 
had grown to such strength and raised such a following 
even in the older states that the presidency was now in 
their hands. It is an old story, — the history of Jack- 
son's administration, when he broke with all tradition, 
social, political, and financial, and followed the policy 
which seemed to him best, in spite of the opposition 
which at some time in his term he met with in every 
quarter. He had no sympathy with the intense loyalty 
of the Southerner to his state, for he was a product of 
the frontier, of a state whose history did not begin until 
the Revolution was imminent. He came from a region 

* The movement for internal improvements to be made by the federal 
government belongs to this period. It was to a large extent induced by 
frontier demands, especially from those parts of the country which were 
as yet too poor to make expenditures out of their own pockets. 



TWO CENTURIES AND A HALF OF PIONEERING 269 

where all the elements mingled, as they have always done 
upon the edge of the wilderness ; the homogeneous char- 
acter of an Eastern commonwealth had no place in a state 
to whose building the sons of many states had contrib- 
uted. The frontier man, a complex of many men, yet dif- 
ferentiated from them all, — such was Andrew Jackson. 

Passing over the panic of 1837, which was caused by 
speculation in Western lands combined with frontier 
banking, the rise of the Free-Soil party shows a slightly 
different phase of the question. The first organized 
movement for the formation of such a party came 
from an anti-slavery society which had been formed in 
Burlington, Racine County, Wisconsin, in 1840. That 
region had been settled by New England or New York 
men, in whom the political sense was keenly developed. 
Generations of town-meetings had produced an especial 
capacity for transacting public business ; most of these 
Wisconsin men had served their apprenticeship in such 
local gatherings. To such politicians the policy of the 
abolitionists was incomprehensible, the vagueness of 
their platform unattractive, and the narrowness of their 
plan of action "positively distasteful." * Two newspapers 
were secured for the Free-Soil side, and the campaign 
began, — a frontier movement at its very beginning. 

It was the rapid settlement of the West which turned 
the eyes of the Southerners toward Texas, with its wide 
areas for cotton culture. The rapid development of the 

* For the history of the Free-Soil party in Wisconsin, see Professor 
Theodore Clarke Smith, in Proc. Wisconsin Hist. Soc. (1895), pp. 101- 
107. The phrase used above is his. For interesting observations on the 
effect of the town-meeting in developing politicians, see D wight, Travels, 
i, 249-252. 



270 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

lower South, with its peculiar system of immense planta- 
tions developed out of English economic demands in the 
decade 1830-40, had made expansion to the West a 
necessity. The Mexican War was essentially a war of ag- 
gression begun at the behest of a frontier which seemed 
to be cut off from further extension.* 

When, in 1854, the Republican party was formed, it 
was in answer to the demands of the frontier that slavery 
should not be thrust upon pioneers building new states. 
Stephen A. Douglas, a Vermonter by birth, had no 
chance for the presidency in the face of Lincoln's can- 
didacy under the Republican party's standard. The elec- 
tion of Abraham Lincoln was brought about by the 
union of many factions and many creeds under the lead- 
ership of a frontier man to carry out a frontier policy. 
Transplanted New Englanders joined with emigrants 
from many other states, and carried a representative of 
pioneer stock in a pioneer state to the chief magistracy 
of the nation. When the war had broken out, when the 
Southerners had withdrawn from the Congress of the 
United States, one of the first acts of the national legis- 
lature was to pass the Homestead Act, the great triumph 
of the Northern pioneer, the crystallization in statute of 
the frontiersman's protest against bringing into the 
West the large plantations run by slaves.^ 

> See William Garrott Brown, The Lower South in American History. 
Also Professor F. J. Turner, " The South, 1820-1830," in the American 
Historical Review, April, 1906, especially 565-573. James Russell Lowell's 
Biglow Papers are invaluable as an expression of contemporary opinion 
on the Mexican War. 

^ Payson J. Treat, manuscript thesis on the influence of New England 
on the public land system. 



' TWO CENTURIES AND A HALF OF PIONEERING 271 

Besides the active influence that emig-ration from 
New England had exerted, there is a negative side to be 
noted as well. The rise of steamboat navigation and of 
the railroad developed the West in an extraordinarily 
short time. Travel became easy, markets for surplus 
products came almost to the farmer's door, and pioneer- 
ing lost many of its hardships. To the steamboat and 
the railroad may be traced the marvelous growth of 
Michigan and Wisconsin especially. But this drain of 
population had an effect upon New England ; the in- 
crease of population fell off in the decade ending with 
1840, to 14 per cent ; it had been 17 per cent between 
1820 and 1830.* The agricultural sections were affected 
especially, for the emigrants to the West had been 
mostly farmers. In at least five of the New England 
States the agricultural population, between 1830 and 
1840, either remained stationary, or actually decreased. 
Maine had an extensive farming territory, and there the 
increase was nearly equal to the annual increase in the 
United States. Between 1830 and 1840 two counties 
out of the eight in Connecticut decreased in population, 
and one increased by only thirty-five inhabitants. Wash- 
ington County, Rhode Island, lost 1087 persons ; almost 
the whole increase of the entire state was in Providence 
and the surrounding county. In New Hampshire, Che- 
shire County lost 587 ; the increase was confined almost 
entirely to the cities of Manchester, Nashua, and Dover. 
Six of the thirteen counties of Vermont decreased. 

With the decrease in population went a change in 
occupation. The intensive cultivation required in New 

> See Chickering, Statistical Vieto of Massachusetts Population, 71, 72. 



272 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

England could not compete with the extensive system 
of the prairie states, and New England, worsted in com- 
petition with the West, was forced to change from agri- 
culture to manufacturing/ With this change, the char- 
acter of the population was altered. The small farmer, 
the ambitious mechanic, had emigrated ; their places 
were taken by immigrants from foreign countries who 
could be used as factory hands, as well as to supply the 
demand for manual labor for which emigration was 
largely responsible. By the call of the frontier, the 
character of New England was changed. 

When one notes how many of the cities and towns of 
New England are to-day controlled politically by those 
who have neither Puritan traditions, Puritan back- 
ground of ancestry, nor Puritan ideals, one feels dis- 
mayed, for it would seem that the old order had passed 
away save in memory and in history.^ But it is not an 
unintelligent and sentimental optimism alone which 
asserts that New England is still a living force, and 
Puritan traditions and ideals still working models. Such 
an assertion is proved to be undeniable fact when the 
sons and daughters of New England have been sought 
out in the West. The history of New England is not 
confined to six states ; it is contained in a greater and 
broader New England wherever the children of the 
Puritans are found. 

1 The invention of the McCormick reaper in 1834 gave a tremendous 
impetus to the system of extensive farming in the West, and had great 
influence in developing the competition in agriculture whereby the East 
was worsted. 

2 See Hugh McCuUoch, quoted along this same line, by E. P. Powell, 
in " New England in Michigan," New England Magazine, xiii, 427. 



APPENDICES 



APPENDIX A 

The methods used in making the maps for this study may 
need explanation. For the New England ones, the date of 
settlement of every town has been ascertained as nearly as 
possible, and each one has then been plotted in its proper 
place in the period covered by the map. When the date of 
settlement is unknown, the date of incorporation has been 
taken ; but that was necessary in comparatively few cases. 
After all the towns settled in a given period were drawn on 
the map, the outer line of all has been taken as the frontier 
line at the last date chosen, and the whole area within that 
line has been colored as the settled area of the period. Of 
course each period includes all previous frontier lines, with 
the towns added between the new dates taken, except where 
Indians have destroyed towns and the settlers have not rebuilt 
them ; in that case they are omitted. 

The maps outside of New England are done in a different 
manner, and are of two kinds : the first kind of maps indicates 
the counties and towns where New Englanders actually settled, 
their presence having been ascertained from many sources. 
In these no account is taken of any other sort of settlement 
save that directly from New England. In the second kind of 
maps, the census maps in the Statistical Atlas of 1890 have 
been made the basis of the work, since they show the whole 
area settled at the end of each decade. Upon these has been 
overlaid the New England settlement of the maps before 
1790 as well as afterward. 

The bibliography of this study includes only the books 
actually referred to in the text ; the maps represent research 
through an enormous mass of material afforded by the facili- 
ties of the libraries of Harvard College, the "Wisconsin State 



276 THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 

Historical Society, the University of Wisconsin, Leland Stan- 
ford Junior University, and the city of Indianapolis. There 
have been called into requisition colonial records ; proceed- 
ings and collections of historical societies ; state, county, and 
town histories ; genealogies and family histories ; church rec- 
ords ; papers of missionaries and missionary societies ; tax 
lists and lists of ratable polls ; city directories ; college cata- 
logues ; manuscript letters and papers ; lists of marriages, 
deaths, and births ; — any sort of material that could throw 
light upon the settlement, history, annals, or population of a 
town. The maps are intended to illustrate the text by show- 
ing the actual area of settled land, with the frontier line, at 
any given time. 



APPENDIX B 

NATIVITY OF POPULATION 

Census of 1850. (Includes only natives of New York and the New England 

States.) 





Conn. 


Mass. 


Ver. 
mont 


New 
Hamp. 


Maine 


Bhode 
Island 


New 
York 


New York 


66101 


55773 


52599 


14519 


4509 


13129 




Penn. 


9266 


7330 


4532 


1775 


1157 


1946 


58835 


New Jersey 


2105 


1494 


280 


301 


287 


264 


20561 


Ohio 


22855 


18763 


14320 


4821 


3314 


1959 


83979 


Indiana 


2485 


2678 


3183 


886 


976 


438 


67180 


Illinois 


6889 


9230 


11381 


4288 


3693 


1051 


24310 


Michigan 


6751 


8167 


11113 


2744 


1117 


1031 


133756 


Wisconsin 


4125 


6285 


10157 


2520 


3252 


690 


68595 



NATIVITY OF POPULATION 

Census of 1860. (Includes only natives of New York and the New England 

States.) 





New 
York 


Ver- 
mont 


Conn. 


Mass. 


New 
Uamp. 


Maine 


Rhode 
Island 


New York 




46990 


53141 


50004 


nmi 


5794 


9555 


Ohio 


75550 


11652 


16741 


16313 


4111 


3011 


1558 


Indiana 


30855 


3539 


2505 


3443 


1072 


1293 


455 


Illinois 


121508 


18253 


11192 


19053 


7868 


7475 


2252 


Michigan 


191128 


13779 


7636 


9873 


3482 


2214 


1122 


Wisconsin 


120637 


19184 


7203 


12115 


5907 


8467 


1462 



From all the New England States. 

Ohio 53386 

Indiana 12307 

Elinois 66093 

Michigan 38106 

Wisconsin ...... 54338 



278 



THE EXPANSION OF NEW ENGLAND 



APPENDIX C 

SETTLEMENT OF VERMONTERS IN WISCONSIN BY COUNTIES 





1870 




1870 




1870 


Adama . 


. . 168 


Green . . 


. 391 


Polk . 


. . 30 


Ashland 




Green Lake 


. 353 


Portage 


. . 192 


Barron . 


. . 8 


Iowa . . 


. 72 


Racine . 


. . 357 


Bayfield 


. . 2 


Jackson 


140 


Richland 


. 258 


Brown . 


. . 211 


Jefferson . 


. 632 


Rock . 


. 171 


Buffalo . 


. . 194 


Juneau 


. 298 


Sauk 


. 609 


Burnett 




Kenosha 


. 235 


Sliawano 


. 23 


Calumet 


. . 130 


Kewaunee . 


27 


Sheboygan 


. 272 


Chippewa 


. 143 


La Crosse . 


333 


St. Croix 


. 231 


Clark . 


. 80 


La Fayette 


. 150 


Trempaleai 


I . 177 


Columbia 


. 680 


Manitowoc 


. 136 


Vernon . 


. 218 


Crawford 


. 137 


Marathon . 


46 


Walworth 


. 736 


Dane . . 


. 1061 


Marquette . 


216 


Washingtoi] 


I . 58 


Dodge . 


. 764 


Milwaukee 


478 


Waukesha 


. 440 


Dorr 


. 21 


Monroe 


458 


Waupaca . 


. 378 


Douglas 


4 


Oconto . . 


90 


Waushara . 


. 354 


Dunn . 


. 146 


Outagamie . 


222 


Winnebago 


. 940 


Eau Claire 


. 208 


Ozaukee 


2 


Wood . , 


. 46 


Fond du Li 


ic . 995 


Pekin . . 


135 






Grant . 


. 317 


Pierce . . 


228 







INDEX 



INDEX 



Abingdon, Massachusetts, 84 n. 

Academies, Connecticut, Lebanon, 132 
n. ; New London, 132 n. ; Michigan, 
230 ; New Hampshire, Amherst, 132 ; 
Atkinson, 132; Concord, 132; New 
Ipswich, 132. 

" Accommodation system " of Congre- 
gational churches, 163, 187, 188, 
234. 

Adams, John Quincy, 268. 

Adams, Massachusetts, 110, 158. 

Adams County, Illinois, 207. 

Addington, Isaac, 73 n. 

Addison, Vermont, 142, 227. 

Addison County, Vermont, 228. 

Agricultural societies, 185. 

Aix-la-Chapelle, peace of, 102, 108. 

Albany, New York, 157, 227. 

Albany, Vermont, 202. 

Alden, Timothy, 152. 

Alford, Massachusetts, 80. 

Alleghany College, Pennsylvania, 152. 

Alleghany Mountains, The, 9, 131. 

Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, 151. 

Allen, Ethan, 128. 

Almira College, Greenville, Illinois, 
218 n. 

Alstead, New Hampshire, 144. 

Alton, Illinois, 218 n. 

Amesbury, Massachusetts, 31, 49. 

Amherst, Massachusetts, 79. 

Amherst, New Hampshire, 89, 202, 
231 n. 

Amherst, Ohio, 185 n. 

Andover, Illinois, 215, 216. 

Andover, Maine, 141. 

Andover, Massachusetts, 113, 114, 141, 
202. 

Andover, Ohio, 185 n. 

Andover, Vermont, 129 n. 



Angell, President James F., 233. 

Annapolis, Nova Scotia, 88. 

"Anne," The, 13. 

Appalachian Mountains, The, 118, 171- 

Arlington, Vermont, 116. 

Arnold, Jonathan, 144. 

Aroostook County, Maine, 145. 

Ashburnham, Massachusetts, 83 n., 98. 

Ashfield, Massachusetts, 240 n. 

Ashf ord, Massachusetts, 90. 

Ashley River, The, 68. 

Ashtabula County, Ohio, 179. 

Athens, Pennsylvania, 244. 

Athol, Massachusetts, 109 n. 

Atkinson, Maine, 141. 

Atkinson, New Hampshire, 89. 

Attleborough, Massachusetts, 168 n. 

Atwater, Joshua, 196. 

Auburn, Maine, 141. 

Auburn Theological Seminary, New 

York, 161. 
Auction-sales of townships, 93, 110. 
Augusta, Maine, 114. 
Augusta, New York, 158. 
Austinsburgh, Ohio, 179. 
Ayer, Massachusetts, 58 n. 

Bacon Academy, Colchester, Connecti- 
cut, 233. 

Baldwin, Maine, 114. 

Banking in New England, 105. 

Baptists, 164. See also Baptist Church. 

Baptist Church, 6, 164, 202. 

Barkhamstead, Connecticut, 92, 93, 
109, 111. 

Barnard, Vermont, 117 n. 

Barn-raisings, 7. 

Barnstable, Massachusetts, 28, 49, 54, 
65, 84 n., 109, 167 n., 168 n. 

Barre, Massachusetts, 143. 



282 



INDEX 



Barrington, Nova Scotia, emigration 
to, 118 n, 

Barrington, Rhode Island, 50. 

Barton, Vermont, 144. 

Bath, Maine, 86. 

Bath, New Hampshire, 144, 167 n, 

Beeket, Massachusetts, 108, 181. 

" Beeket Land Company," The, 181. 

Bedford, New Hampshire, 88 n., 89. 

Bedford, New York, 66, 70. 

Bedford County, Pennsylvania, 131. 

Belcher, Governor, on Newark inhab- 
itants, 54. 

Belfast, Maine, 113, 130. 

Beloit, Wisconsin, 240, 241, 242, 243, 
245. 

Beloit College, Wisconsin, 242. 

Bennington, Vermont, 115, 116, 117, 
144, 167 n., 240 n. 

Bennington County, Vermont, 145, 230. 

Benson, Vermont, 142, 212. 

Benson colony, The, of DuPage County, 
Illinois, 212. 

Bergen, New York, 162. 

Berkeley, Lord, 48, 52. 

Berkshire, New York, 157 n. 

Berkshire County, Massachusetts, 9, 79, 
104, 158, 162, 201, 240 n. ; revolt 
of, in 1778-79, 263, 264. 

Berlin, Connecticut, 125 n. 

Berlin, Massachusetts, 58 n. 

Berlin, Pennsylvania, 125 n. 

Berrien County, Michigan, 227. 

Berwick, Maine, 84 n., 88. 

Bethel, Vermont, 130. 

Bethlehem, Connecticut, 94. 

Bethlehem, New Hampshire, 140. 

Beverly, Massachusetts, 114. 

Bible Society of Ohio, The, 176. 

Biddeford, Maine, 57. 

Big Black River, The, of Mississippi, 
127. 

Billerica, Massachusetts, 89. 

Binghamton, New York, 155. 

Black Hawk War, The, 210, 211 ; in- 
fluence on settlement, 210, 211, 236, 
237. 

Black River, The, of Vermont, 98 n. 

Blakeley, Josiah, 168 n. 



Blandford, Massachusetts, 78 n. 

Bloomfield, Maine, 114. 

Bloomfield, New Jersey, 54 n. 

Bloomfield, Vermont, 146. 

Bloomington, Indiana, 203. 

Bloomington, Wisconsin, 244. 

Blount County, Tennessee, 128, 199. 

Bluehill, Maine, 114. 

Bolton, Connecticut, 145, 179. 

Boone, Daniel, 131, 196. 

Boothbay, Maine, 240 n. 

Boston, Massachusetts, 9, 15, 26, 32, 
33 n., 58, 70, 77 n., 82, 90 n., 100, 
103 n., 112 n., 114, 158, 176 n., 177, 
202, 218 n. 

Boston and Albany Railroad, The, 36 
n. 

Bounty-lands, in Michigan, 222 ; in 
Ohio, 173. 

Bowdoin, Peter, 147. 

Bowdoin College, 147. 

Bowdoinham, Maine, 218. 

Bowen, family name, 127. 

Bozrah, Connecticut, 167 n. 

Bozrah, Pennsylvania, 125. 

Braddock, General, 108. 

" Braddock Road," The, 174. 

Bradford, Maj. Robert, 177. 

Bradford, William, governor of Ply- 
mouth, 12, 177. 

Bradford, New Hampshire, 112, 202. 

Bradford County, Pennsylvania, 151. 

Bradley, family name, 127. 

Bradley, Maine, 145. 

Braintree, Massachusetts, 14, 49, 85 n., 
143. 

Braintree, Vermont, 143. 

Braintree Farms, Massachusetts. See 
New Braintree. 

Brandon, Vermont, 129. 

Branford, Connecticut, 24 n., 26, 53, 
257 n. 

Brattleboro, Vermont, 199, 240 n. 

Brewer, Maine, 130. 

Bridgeport, Connecticut, 216 n. 

Bridgewater, Massachusetts, 49, 202. 

Brimfield, Massachusetts, 94 n., 112 n. 

Bristol, Connecticut, 240 n. 

Bristol, England, 63. 



INDEX 



283 



Bristol, Maine, 57, 86. 

Bristol, Rhode Island, 63, 91. 

Brooke, Rev. John, 67. 

Brookfiold, Massachusetts, 36 n., 49, 

58 n., 77 n., 79, 94 n., 176 n. 
Brookfield, Pennsylvania, 125 n. 
Brookfield, Vermont, 201. 
Brookline, Massachusetts (first called 

Muddy River), 17. 
Brookline, Vermont, 129 n. 
Brooks, Maine, 141. 
Brown, John, family of, 187 n. 
Brown University, Providence, Rhode 

Island, 218 n., 232, 233. 
Brownstown, Michigan, 224 n. 
Brunswick, Maine, 50, 147. 
Bucksport, Maine, 114. 
Buffalo, New York, 154, 165, 179, 225, 

227. 
Burlington, Vermont, 144, 201, 240. 
Burlington, Wisconsin, 269. 
Burr, John, of Fairfield, Connecticut, 

92. 
Burrillville, Rhode Island, 144. 
Burton, Ohio, 179. 
Butler, family name, 124 n. 
Butler County, Ohio, 178. 
Buttei'field, Jeremiah, 179 n. 
Buxton, Maine, 84 n. 

Cable, John, 21 n. 

Cabot, Vermont, 143. 

Cairo, Illinois, 215 n. 

Caledonia County,Vermont, 202. 

Calhoun, John C, 267, 268. 

California, 7. 

Cambridge, Massachusetts (first called 

Newtowne), 16, 18, 29, 31, 90 n., 117, 

174, 177. 
Cambridge, New Hampshire, 140. 
Cambridge, Vermont, 144. 
Camillus, New York, 232 n. 
Campton, New Hampshire, 112. 
Canaan, Connecticut, 93 n., 143, 168 n., 

176 n., 2.57 n. 
Canaan, Maine, 114. 
Canaan, Pennsylvania, 125 n. 
Canada, 7, 88,98, 141, 142, 207. 
Canada, emigration to, 7, 118 n., 169 d. 



" Canada Townships," 83. 

Canadian expedition. The, of 1690, 83. 

Canandaigua, New York, 156, 164. 

Candor, New York, 163. 

Cane Creek, North Carolina, 128 n. 

Canterbury, Connecticut, 65, 80, 109 n., 

168 n. 
Canterbury, New Hampshire, 89. 
Canton, Pennsylvania, 125 n. 
Cape Cod, Massachusetts, 28, 49, 80, 

84 n., 95, 114, 118 n., 199. 
Cape Elizabeth, Maine, 86. 
Cape May County, New Jersey, 95, 

214 n. 
Cape Porpoise, Maine, 14. 
Cape Sable, Nova Scotia, emigration to, 

118 n. 
Carleton College,, Minnesota, 187. 
Carman, family name, 10, 214 n. 
Caroline, New York, 232 n. 
Carteret, Philip, 53. 
Carteret, Sir George, 48, 52. 
Carver, Deacon John, 11. 
Casco Bay, Maine, 57. 
Case, family name, 127. 
Cash, family name, 119 n. 
Cass, Gen. Lewis, 230, 231. 
Cass County, Indiana, 199. 
Chapman, family name, 124 n. 
Charlemont, Massachusetts, 117, 214 n. 
Charies I, King of England, 2, 16, 43. 
Charles II, King of England, 43, 45, 53. 
Charies River, The, 69 n. 
Charleston, Pennsylvania, 122 n. 
Charlestown, Massachusetts, 25, 29, 68. 
Charlestown, New Hampshire, 89, 109, 

2.57 n. 
Charlestown, Rhode Island, 50, 58. 
Charlton, Massachusetts, 1 10 n. 
Charters issued to colonies, 15, 44, 45, 

46, 48. 
Chatham, Massachusetts, 218 n., 240. 
Chatham County, North Carolina, 128 

n., 199. 
Chautauqua County, New York, 168 n. 
Chelmsford, Massachusetts, 04, 89, 178, 

179. 
Chemung, New York, 153. 
Cherry Valley, New York, 96. 



284 



INDEX 



Cheshire, Connecticut, 24 n., 168 n., 

240 n, 
Cheshire, Massachusetts, 110. 
Chesterfield, Massachusetts, 110, 176 n. 
Chicago, Illinois, 216 n., 236. 
Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Rail- 
road, The, 246. 
" Chicago Road," The, 225. 
Chicopee, Massachusetts, 227. 
Chillicothe, Ohio, 178 n. 
China, Maine, 114. 
Chittenden County, Vermont, 117 n., 

257 n. 
Church quarrels, 18, 19 n., 22, 27, 28, 

31, 32, 33, 34, 62, 72, 104, 117, 188, 

251. 
Churches transplanted, 11, 16, 18, 19, 

20, 28, 31, 34, 36, 37, 88, 92, 116, 127, 

136, 151, 162, 174, 180, 186, 188, 228, 

242. 
Cincinnati, Ohio, 178 n., 193. 
Civil War, The (in England), 48. 
Clap, Rev. Thomas, 69. 
Claremont, New Hampshire, 112, 144, 

257 n. 
Clarendon, Vermont, 146. 
Clarksburg, Massachusetts, 110. 
Clay, Henry, 267, 268. 
Cocheco Falls, New Hampshire, 98, 99. 
Cochecton, Pennsylvania, 119 n. 
Cochrane, Rev. Sylvester, 229, 230. 
Coddington, William, 33. 
Coeducation, 186, 233 n., 262. 
Coffin, family name, 128, 199 n. 
Cohasset, Massachusetts, 110 n. 
Colchester, Connecticut, 60 n., 66 n., 

93 n., 124 n., 167 n., 168 n., 176 n., 

202. 
Colchester, Vermont, 129 n. 
Colebrook, Connecticut, 92, 111, 240 n. 
Colebrook, New Hampshire, 241, 245. 
Colebrook, Ohio, 185 n. 
Coleraine, Massachusetts, 78 n. 
Colleton County, South Carolina, 96. 
Collins, family name, 206. 
Collinsville, Illinois, 206, 207. 
Colonies from New England, 256; in 

Georgia, 96, 97 ; in Illinois, 211, 212, 

213, 214, 215, 216; in Indiana, 



197 n., 199, 202 ; in Long Island, 34 ; 
in Michigan, 228, 229, 230 ; in Mis- 
sissippi, 125, 126, 127, 253 ; in New 
Jersey, 52, 53, 54; in New York, 
34, 35, 155, 157, 158, 159, 162 ; in 
North Carolina, 127, 128, 253; in 
Ohio, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 
180, 185, 186, 192 n; in Pennsyl- 
vania, 118, 120, 121, 124, 125, 151, 
252, 253 ; in South Carolina, 68, 96, 
97 ; in Wisconsin, 240, 241, 242, 243, 
244. 

Columbia River, 10. 

" Common," The, 17. 

Compact by settlers, 11, 22, 52 n., 68, 
122, 123, 159, 180, 186, 229. 

Comstock, family name, 10, 127. 

Comstock, John, 203. 

Concord, Massachusetts, 17, 23, 26, 35, 
62, 63 n., &4, 68, 77 n., 114, 117. 

Concord, New Hampshire, 89, 113, 129 
n. 

Congregational Church, The, 6, 54, 67, 
68, 143, 151, 162, 163, 164, 180, 187, 
205,212,216, 217, 218, 228,230, 233, 
234, 242, 243,244, 245, 267; relation 
to Presbyterian Church, in Indiana, 
205 ; in Michigan, 234 ; in New York, 
162, 163 ; in Ohio, 187, 188. 

Conneaut, Ohio, 178, 179. 

Connecticut, 9, 23, 72, 151, 155, 157, 
158, 159 n. For settlement of, see 
Settlement. For emigration from, see 
Emigration. 

Connecticut River, The, 18, 21, 51, 73, 
83, 84, 85, 89, 95, 153, 174, 175. 

Connecticut, school fund of, 93 n., 174. 

Connecticut Valley, The, 18, 49, 103. 
See also under different towns. 

Constitutional Conventions in Wiscon- 
sin, 239. 

Conway, Massachusetts, 176 n., 189. 

" Coonskin Library," The, 178 n. 

Cooper, Thomas, 21 n. 

Coos County, New Hampshire, 140. 

"Coos Road," The, 142. 

Corn-husking, 8. 

Cornish, New Hampshire, 112. 

Cornwall, Connecticut, 93 n. 



INDEX 



285 



Cornwall, New York, 129. 

County officers in New York, 165 ; in 
Ohio, 190, 191. 

County system of government, 165, 190, 
191, 206, 217, 218, 235, 236, 238, 239. 

Coventry, Connecticut, 66 n. 

Coventry, Rhode Island, 46, 58, 232 n. 

Crane, family name, 127. 

Crary, Isaac, 231, 233. 

Crawford County, Pennsylvania, 151, 
152. 

Credit system of public land sales, 183. 

Cromwell, Oliver, 3, 43, 44. 

Crop-failure in the East, 198. 

"Crown Point Road," The, 98, 101. 

Croydon, New Hampshire, 112. 

Crusades, The, 4. 

Cumberland, Rhode Island, 22, 91. 

Cumberland County, Maine, population 
in 1764, 114 n. 

Cumberland County, Vermont, popula- 
tion in 1771, 117. 

Cummins, family name, 119 n. 

Coshetunck, Pennsylvania, 119 n., 
124 n. 

Cutler, Judge Ephraim, 189. 

Cutler, Maine, 141. 

Cutler, Rev. Manasseh, 175. 

Cuyahoga River, The, 178. 

Damariscotta, Maine, 14. 
Damariscove Island, Maine, 88. 
Dana, Capt. William, 177. 
Danbury, Connecticut, 60 n., 64. 
Danby, Vermont, 115. 
Danvers, Massachusetts, 176, 216 n. 
Dartmouth, Massachusetts, 232 n. 
Dartmouth College, 133, 150, 204, 205, 

242. 
Dartmouth College Case, The, 267. 
Davenport and Eaton Company, The, 

24, 25, 51, 52. 
Dearborn County, Indiana, 198, 206. 
Declaration of Independence, The, 172. 
Dedham, Massachusetts, 35, 58, 80. 
Deerfield, Massachusetts, 50, 58 n., 79, 

90 n. 
Deerfield, New Hampshire, 240 n. 
Deerfield, Ohio, 179. 



Delavan, Illinois, 213, 
Delaware Company, 118, 119. 
Delaware County, New York, 96, 161. 
Delaware River, The, 48, 119, 124 n., 

125, 151. 
Democratic Party, The, 230. 
Dennysville, Maine, 141. 
Denton, family name, 10. 
Denward, Maine, 141. 
Derby, Connecticut, 92, 240. 
Derby, Vermont, 245. 
Detroit, Michigan, 222, 223, 224, 225, 

227,228,230; incorporation of , 223. 
Devol, Jonathan, 177. 
Devonshire, England, 8. 
Dexter, Maine, 141, 240 n. 
Difficulty of peopling wilderness, 31, 

35, 60, 61, 62, 63, 77, 78, 84, 85, 89, 

90, 99, 101. 
Dighton, Massachusetts, 155. 
Dinsmore, Silas, 168 n. 
Doane, family name, 128 n. 
Doane, Daniel, 69 n. 
Doane, Elnathan, 95 n. 
Doanesburg, New York, 95 n. 
Dorchester, Connecticut. See Windsor. 
Dorchester, Massachusetts, 15, 65, 68, 

83 n. 
Dorchester, South Carolina, 68, 96. 
Dorset, Vermont, 202. 
Dorsetshire, England, 14 n. 
Douglas, Stephen A., 270. 
Dover, New Hampshire, 14, 32, 99. 
Dracut, Massachusetts, 177. 
Drury, S. F., 232. 
Drury College, Missouri, 187, 232. 
Dudley, Massachusetts, 110 n. 
Duke of York, The, 48. 
" Duke of York's Laws," The, 47, 48, 

165. 
Dummer, Jeremiah, 82. 
Dummer, William, 82. 
Dummer, New Hampshire, 140. 
Dummerston, Vermont, 90. 
Dunbar, Governor, 88. 
Dunstable, Massachusetts, 49, 50, 57, 

62, 86. 
DuPage County, Illinois, emigration to, 

142 a. 



286 



INDEX 



Durham, Connecticut, 66 n.,93 n., 156, 

157, 157 n., 257 n. 
Durham, New Hampshire (first called 

Oyster River), 14. 
Durham, New York, 157, 160. 
Dutch, The, 18. 
Dutchess County, New York, 95, 116, 

144. 
Duxhury, Massachusetts, 13, 84 n., 

212 n. 
Dwight, Timothy, on Maine, 147 ; on 

New Hampshire, 147 ; on Vermont, 

146, 147 ; on New York, 160, 168, 

169 ; on classes of settlers, 148 n. 

East Bridgewater, Massachusetts, 49. 

Eastdorp, New York. See Westchester. 

East Florida, territory of, 118. 

East Greenwich, Rhode Island, 50, 
60. 

East Haddam, Connecticut, 111, 112, 
239 n. 

Eastham, Massachusetts, 28 n., 62, 69 
n., 84 n., 95 n. 

Easthampton, Long Island, 26, 34. 

East Haven, Connecticut, 24 n. 

East India Company, The, 15. 

East Jersey. See New Jersey. 

East Poultney, Vermont, 227, 229, 230. 

East Smithfield, Pennsylvania, 151. 

East Windsor, Connecticut, 51, 111. 

Eaton County, Michigan, 229. 

Economic conditions, about 1812 ; 182, 
183. 

Edgartown, Massachusetts, 29. 

Edict of Nantes, revocation of, 63. 

Education, neglect of, 104, 131, 1.32, 
146, 147, 167 n. ; provision for, 38, 
39, 54, 69, 121, 132, 133, 136, 147, 
152, 161, 162, 107, 174,175, 176, 180, 
185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 
196, 202, 203, 204, 205, 207, 216, 217, 
218,230,232,233, 242,24.3. 

Edwards County, Illinois, New Eng- 
land colony in, 214 n. 

Egremont, Massachusetts, 79. 

Election of 1824, 268 ; of 1828, 268 ; 
of ISGO, 270. 

Eliot, Rev. John, 65. 



Elizabeth, New Jersey, 54, 56, 67. 

Elizabeth, queen of England, 3. 

Elk County, Pennsylvania, 151. 

Elkhart County, Indiana, 200 n. 

Ellington, Connecticut, 103. 

Elliot, James, 145. 

Ellsworth, family name, 127. 

Ellsworth, Ohio, 179. 

Emerald Grove, Wisconsin, 244. 

Emigration ; from Canada, 141 ; from 
Connecticut, 8, 9, 10, 34, 52, 53, 54, 
80, 90 n., 91, 92, 95, 96, 97, 109, 110, 

111, 112, 113, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 
120, 124 n., 125, 126, 127, 129, 133, 
134, 136, 140, 142,143, 145, 146, 151, 
152, 154, 155,jl56, 157, 158, 159, 160, 
161, 162, 167 n., 168 n., 174, 175, 177, 
178, 179, 181, 184, 185, 186, 189, 192, 
193, 196, 199, 200 n., 201, 202, 206, 
210, 213, 215, 216 n., 227, 228, 231, 
233, 237, 239 n., 240, 244, 245, 257 ; 
from England, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 11, 12, 
13, 14, 15, 24, 25, 26, 28, 55, 69, 70, 
117 ; from Illinois, 226 ; from Indi- 
ana, 200 n., 226 ; from Ireland, 78, 
87, 87 n., 88, 160 ; from Kentucky, 
182, 196, 198, 206, 218, 226, 236; 
from Long Island, 55, 67, 136, 214 n.; 
from Maine, 8, 9, 151, 152, 194, 200 
n., 212, 213, 214, 216 n., 227, 231 n., 
237, 239 n., 240 n., 245, 259; from 
Maryland, 179, 181, 200 n. ; from 
Massachusetts, 8,9, 10, 14, 18, 19, 
21, 22, 26, 31, 33, 34, 54, 63, 64, 65, 
66, 68, 83, 84, 87, 89, 90, 95, 96, 109, 

112, 113, 114, 11.5, 116, 117, 125 n., 
126, 127, 128, 129, 140, 141, 143, 145, 
151, 152, 155, 157, 158, 159, 161, 162, 

167 n., 168 n., 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 
180, 181, 188, 189, 192, 193, 196, 199, 
200 n., 201, 202, 210, 211, 213, 214 n., 
215, 216 n., 218, 227, 228, 231, 232, 
2.39 n., 240, 244, 245, 246, 258 ; from 
Mississippi, 218 ; from Missouri, 236 ; 
from New Hampshire, 8, 9, 32, 54, 
88,89, 90 n., 109, 113, 114, 115, 129, 
1.30, 140, 141, 144, 159 n., 167 n., 

168 n., 177, 194. 200 n., 202, 204, 20.5, 
211, 216 n., 227, 228, 231 n., 239 n., 



INDEX 



287 



240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 259 
from New Jersey, 95, 96, 111,116 n. 
117, 136, 144, 146, 151, 153, 158, 
169 n., 178 n., 183, 192, 200 n., 214 n. 
from New York, 8, 9, 79, 116, 117 
129, 144, 146, 151, 152, 153, 182, 183 
186, 199, 200 n., 212, 216 n., 231 
232, 239, 246, 259 ; from North Car- 
olina, 128, 181, 198, 199, 200 n., 206 
from Ohio, 199, 200 n., 226, 230, 231 
from Pennsylvania, 8, 9, 128, 169 n. 
179, 181, 182, 183, 192, 193, 199, 200 
n., 244 ; from Rhode Island, 67, 110, 
112, 113, 115, 125 n., 140, 143, 144 
146, 157, 158, 159 n., 168 n., 175, 177 
194, 200 n., 203, 211, 212, 213, 216 n. 
227, 228, 232, 233, 239 n., 245, 258 
from Scotland, 55, 159 n., 176; from 
South Carolina, 96, 181, 198, 200 n. 
206 ; from Tennessee, 128, 198, 199 
200 n., 226, 236 ; from Vermont, 8, 
9, 155, 157, 160, 169 n., 185, 186, 199 
200 n., 201, 202, 203, 206, 207, 210, 
211, 212, 216 n., 227, 228, 229, 230, 
231 n., 237, 239 n., 240, 244, 245, 246 
259 ; from Virginia, 178 n.,181, 182 
183, 192, 193, 196, 198, 200 n., 206 
231 n., 232. 

Endicott, John, governor of Massachu- 
setts Bay Colony, 15. 

Enfield, Connecticut, 64, 80, 111, 129 
n., 245. 

England, 1, 4, 5, 7, 23, 25, 26, 28, 31, 48, 
55, 72, 77, 81, 84. See also Emigra- 
tion. 

English names in New England, 11. 

Episcopal Church, of Worthington, 
Ohio, 180. 

Erie Canal, 222, 225, 227; effect of, 
upon settlement of Michigan and 
Wisconsin, 222. 

Erie County, Pennsylvania, 151. 

Erving, Massachusetts, 140 n. 

Essex, Vermont, 143. 

Essex County, England, 14 n., 26. 

Essex County, Massachusetts, 264. 

Essex County, New York, 162. 

Evanston, Illinois, "Biblical Institute" 
of, 21& 



EvansviUe, Indiana, 201. 

Exeter, Maine, 141. 

Exeter, New Hampshire, 31, 32, 89, 

177, 230. 
Exeter, Pennsylvania, 124 n. 

Fairchild, President James, 187. 

Fairfax, Vermont, 143, 144, 202. 

Fairfield, Connecticut, 24, 26, 55, 60 n., 
67, 92, 93 n., 201. 

Fairfield, Illinois, 257 n. 

Fairfield, New Jersey, 67. 

Fairfield, Vermont, 143. 

Fairfield County, Connecticut, 161. 

Fair Haven, Vermont, 167 n. 

Falmouth, Maine, 85, 182. 

Falmouth, Massachusetts, 49, 109. 

Farmer, John, map of Michigan, 226. 

Farmington, Connecticut, 93 n,, 112, 
151 n. 

Farmington, New York, 158. 

Farmington, Ohio, 185 n. 

Farmington, Pennsylvania, 125 n. 

Federalist Party, The, decline of, 267, 
268. 

Ferrisburgh, Vermont, 143. 

Field, Marshall, 216 n. 

Fisher's Island, 27, 45. 

Fitchburg, Massachusetts, 98. 

Fletcher, Calvin, 199, 202, 203. 

Flint, James, on Illinois settlers, 148 
n. ; on Indiana settlers, ibid. ; on 
Kentucky settlers, ihid. ; on Ohio 
settlers, ibid. ; on Pennsylvania set- 
tlers, ibid. 

Flint, Timothy, on Ohio settlers, 183, 
184, 185. 

Florence, New York, 163. 

Florida, Massachusetts, 140 n. 

Foot, Capt. Moses, 159. 

Forbes, John, and Co., Mobile, Ala- 
bama, 168 n. 

Ford, Ex-Gov. Thomas, on early set- 
tlers of Illinois, 209 n. 

Fort Dearborn, Illinois, 225. 

Fort Dummer, Vermont, 90. 

Fort Duquesne, 108. 

Fort Herkimer, New York, 154. 

Fort Mcintosh, treaty of, 173. 



288 



INDEX 



Fort Oswego, New York, 157. 

Fort Schuyler, New York, 154. 

FortStanwix, 154. 

Fort Stanwix, treaty of, 118, 173. 

" Fortune," The, 13. 

Framingham, Massachusetts, 31, 62, 
63 n., 77 n. 

Franklin, Col. John, 151 n. 

Frary, Samuel, 49. 

Free silver agitation, 7. 

Freedom, Maine, 141. 

Freemen in colonies, 12, 13, 15, 17, 20, 
37, 38. 

Freesoil Party, The, 187, 202, 269. 

French Canadian emigrants, 141, 142. 

Frenchtown, Michigan, 222, 224 n. 

Frenchtown, Rhode Island, 63. 

Frontier, The, unique feature of Amer- 
ican history, 1, 172, 173; radicalism 
of, 2, 4, 5, 71, 72, 73, 80, 81, 137 ; 
character of, 6, 7, 8, 70, 71, 72. 73, 
80, 81, 99, 100, 103, 104, 105, 106, 
136, 147, 148, 149, 150, 166, 167, 181, 
182, 184, 185, 191, 192, 198, 199, 203, 
204, 207, 208, 251, 252, 255, 256, 260, 
261 ; adaptation to, 261, 262 ; reac- 
tion upon older communities, 262, 
263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 
270 ; protection for, 60. 

Frontier, extent of, 14, 15, 23, 33, 34, 
35, 36, 51, 52, 58, 90, 139, 181, 182, 
183, 193,206, 221, 222, 251, 252, 253, 
254, 255. 

Frontier building, causes of, 2, 3, 4, 
5, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 49, 50, 51, 71, 
72, 99, 100, 101, 117, 120, 166, 198, 
207, 208, 213, 229, 250, 251, 259, 260, 
261. 

Frontiersmen in the Revolution, 128, 
130. 

Fur trading, 3, 19 n., 21, 118, 155. 

Galena, Illinois, 236. 

Garland, Maine, 141. 

•' Gaspee " affair. The, 177. 

Gaylord, family name, 124 n. 

Gazetteers, influence of, on settlement, 

211, 260. 
Geauga County, Ohio, 179. 



General Court of Massachusetts Bay- 
Colony, 17, 18, 29, 30, 33, 35, 50, 60, 
62, 79, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 88 n., 110, 
135. 

" Genesee country," The, 148, 164, 166; 
Congregationalists in, 164. 

Genesee River, The, 158. 

Geneseo, Illinois, 216. 

Geneva, New York, 161. 

Genoa, New York, 162. 

Georgetown, Maine, 88, 113. 

Georgia, New England colony in. See 
Colonies. 

German Flats, New York, 159. 

Ghent, treaty of, 183, 197. 

Gibson County, Indiana, 196. 

Gilman, family name of, 177. 

Gilmanton, New Hampshire, 134, 211. 

Gilsum, New Hampshire, 112, 216 n. 

Glastenbury, Connecticut, 142. 

Glocester, Rhode Island, 91 n., 144. 

Gloucester, Massachusetts, 16, 28, 
87. 

Gloucester County, Vermont, popula- 
tion in 1771, 117. 

Goffstown, New Hampshire, 202. 

Gore, Obadiah, of Norwich, Connecti- 
cut, 121 n. 

Gorham, Maine, 86. 

Gorham, Nathaniel, 156. 

Goshen, Connecticut, 93 n., 257 n. 

Gosport, New Hampshire, 32. 

Gould, Jay, 161. 

Gouldsborough, Maine, 141. 

Government ; in Connecticut Colony, 
20, 37, 38, 45; in Illinois, 217, 218; 
in Long Island, 34, 38 ; in Maine, 32, 
33, 38 ; in Massachusetts Bay Colony, 
15, 37, 38 ; in New Hampshire, 32, 
38 ; in New Jersey, 54, 56 ; in New 
York, 47, 48, 165, 166 ; in Plymouth 
Colony, 11, 12, 37 ; in Pennsylvania 
settlements, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125 ; 
in Rhode Island, 33, 38. 

Grafton, Massachusetts, 79 n. 

Granby, Connecticut, 58, 179, 202. 

Granby, Massachusetts, 79. 

Granby, Vermont, 145. 

Grand Isle, Vermont, 143, 201. 



INDEX 



289 



Granville, Massachusetts, 156, 180, 181, 
258 n. 

Granville, New York, 167 n. 

Granville, Ohio, 180, 181, 192 ; Congre- 
gational Church of, 180, 188 ; Epis- 
copal Church of, 188; Presbyterian 
churches of, 188. 

Granville, Pennsylvania, 125 n. 

Gravesend, Long Island, 34. 

Great Barrington, Massachusetts, 79, 
109, 167 n. 

Green Bay Railroad, The, 246 n. 

Green County, Wisconsin, 237. 

Green Mountains, The, 153. 

" Green Mountain Boys," The, 128. 

Green River, New York, 167 n. 

Greencastle, Pennsylvania, 232 n. 

Greene, Griffin, 177. 

Greene County, Tennessee, 128, 199. 

Greenland, New Hampshire, 61. 

Greenville, treaty of, 173. 

Greenville, New York, 257 n. 

Greenwich, Massachusetts, 240 n. 

Greenwich, Ohio, 178. 

Greenwich, Rhode Island, 64 n., 178, 
203. 

Greenwood, Maine, 141. 

Grenada, territory of, 118. 

Grinnell, Iowa, 187, 247 n. 

Groton, Connecticut, 64. 

Groton, Massachusetts, 58 n., 143 n., 
216 n. 

Groton, New Hampshire, 245. 

Groton, Vermont, 143 n., 144. 

Guilford, Connecticut, 25, 26, 51, 53, 66 
n., 117, 162, 168 n., 257 n. 

Guilford County, North Carolina, 127, 
128, 199. 

Guilford, Vermont, 257 n. 

Haddam, Connecticut, 51. 

Hadley, Massachusetts, 50, 58 n., 79, 

111,146, 216 n. 
Hale, Nathan, 132 n. 
Halifax, Massachusetts, 62. 
Hall, Dr. Lyman, 97. 
Hamden, Connecticut, 24 n., 111. 
Hamilton, New York, 231 n. 
^Hamilton College, New York, 161. 



Hampden, Maine, 114, 130. 
Hampshire colony. The, in Bureau 

County, Illinois, 213. 
Hampshire County, Massachusetts, 79, 

162, 202 ; revolt of, in 1786, 266. 
Hampshire Missionary Society, The, 

164. 
Hampstead, Long Island, 55. 
Hampstead, New Hampshire, 177. 
Hampton, New Hampshire, 31, 32, 61, 

84 n. 
Hancock, Massachusetts, 110. 
Hanover, Illinois. See Metamora. 
Hanover, Massachusetts, 168 n. 
Hanover, New Hampshire, 129, 130, 133. 
Hanover, Pennsylvania, 121 n., 124 n. 
Hanson, Massachusetts, 62, 216 n. 
Hardwick, Massachusetts, 116, 129 n., 

143. 
Hartford, Connecticut, 9, 27, 31, 51, 

65, 66 n., 92, 93, 100, 111, 122, 127, 

142, 151, 168 n., 176, 181, 233. 
Hartford, Ohio, 185 n. 
Hartford, Vermont, 116, 244. 
Hartford County, Connecticut, 201. 
Hartland, Connecticut, 92, 109, 111,^ 

146, 168 n. 
Hartland, Maine, 141. 
Hartland, Vermont, 245. 
Harvard College, 39, 63 n., 60; 150. 
Harwich, Massachusetts, 227. 
Harwinton, Connecticut, 92. 
Haskel, family name, 124 n. 
Hatfield, Massachusetts, 50, 58 n., 79, 

80. 
Haverhill, Massachusetts, 32, 54, 64, 

89. 113, 114. 
Haverhill, New Hampshire, 129 n. 
Hazen, General, 142 n. 
" Hazen road," The, 142 n. 
Hebron, Connecticut, 66, 80, 112, 167 n. 
Hebron, Maine, 114. 
Henry County, Dlinois, colonies in, 215, 

216. 
Hermon, Maine, 141. 
Hersey, Ira, 213, 214. 
Hertfordshire, England, 26 n. 
Hill, New Hampshire (firstcalled New 

Chester), 134. 



290 



INDEX 



Hillsborough, New Hampshire, 89, 134. 
Hillsdale County, Michigan, 227, 228. 
Hinesburgh, Vermont, 143. 
Hingham, England, 16. 
Hingham, Massachusetts, 16, 112 n., 

141. 
Hinsdale, Massachusetts, 110. 
Hinsdale, New Hampshire, 90. 
Hinsdale College, Michigan, 187. 
Hinsdale family, The, 49. 
Hobart, Peter, 168 n. 
Hog Island, 32. 
Holden, Massachusetts, 143. 
Holland Land Company of New York, 

165, 172. 
Hollis, New Hampshire, 129 n. 
Holmes, William, IS. 
Homestead Act, The, 270. 
Honesdale, Pennsylvania, 152. 
Hooker, Rev. Thomas, 18, 174. 
Hooksett, New Hampshire, 143. 
Hoosick, New York, 232 n. 
" Hoosier," The, character of, 197. 
Hopkins, Edward, 63 n. 
Hopkins, Samuel Miles, 161, 167 n. 
Hopkinton, Massachusetts, 63 n., 78 n. 
Hopkinton, New Hampshire, 164. 
Hopkinton, Rhode Island, 50. 
Horse-stealing, 6, 7. 
Hotchkiss, family name, 127. 
Housatonic River, The, 26, 79, 80, 93, 

103. 
Housatonic Valley, Massachusetts, 91, 

103. 
House-raisings, 7. 
Hovey, E. 0., 205. 
Hubbardton, Vermont, 167 n. 
Hudson, New Hampshire, 61. 
Hudson, New York, 155. 
Hudson River, The, 9, 48, 59, 79, 95, 

129, 153, 155, 172. 
Huguenot refugees, 63, 69, 70. 
Hull, Massachusetts, 14. 
Huntington, Long Island, 55. 
Huntington, Massachusetts (first called 

Norwich), 109. 
Huntington, Vermont, 144, 201. 
Hutchinson, Mrs. Anne, 31, 33. 
Hyde Park, Vermont, 144. 



Illinois, sectional antagonism in, 208, 
2U9, 217 ; settlement of, see Settle- 
ment ; emigration from, see Emigra- 
tion. 

Illinois College, Illinois, 207, 216. 

Indiana, 128, 222; emigration from, 
see Emigration; public schools of, 
204, 205 ; settlement of, see Settle- 
ment. 

Indian treaties after the Revolution, 
173, 174 ; basis of settlement of west, 
173, 174. 

Indian wars, 23, 24, 43, 56, 57, 58, 59, 
60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 76, 77, 85, 86, 87, 
101, 102, 108, 109, 182, 212, 213, 236. 

Indianapolis, Indiana, 201, 202, 203; 
New England Society of, 201. 

Industry in England, 3, 100, 270. 

Intervales, 17. 

Iowa, 8, 247 n. 

Iowa College, Iowa, 187. 

Ipswich, Massachusetts, 16, 32, 64, 84 n. 

Ira, Vermont, 182 n. 

Isles of Shoals, The, 32, 36. 

Jackson, Andrew, 268. 

Jackson, Maine, 141. 

Jamaica, Long Island, 55. 

James I, King of England, 2, 3. 

James River, The, 1. 

Jamestown, Rhode Island, 64 n. 

Janesville, Wisconsin, 244. 

Jay, Maine (first called Phips's 

Canada), 141. 
Jefferson, Michigan, 227, 228. 
Jefferson, Thomas, 183, 223 n. 
Jefferson County, New York, 158. 
Jefferson County, Tennessee, 128, 199. 
Jennings County, Indiana, 198. 
Jericho, Vermont, 245. 
Jersey, Island of, 48. 
Johnson, Vermont, 144. 
Jones, f.amily name, 119 n. 
Judd, Major William, 151 n. 
Judea, Pennsylvania, 122 n. 
Judson, Lewis, 168 n. 

Kalamazoo, Michigan, 227. 
Kansas, 247 n. 



INDEX 



291 



Kaskaskia, Illinois, 215 n. 

Keeue, New Hampshire, 224 n. 

Kennebec County, Maine, 57. 

Kennebec River, Maine, 13, 14, 23. 

Kenosha, Wisconsin, 243. 

Kent, Connecticut, 93 n., 124 n. 

Kent, England, 13. 

Kent County, Michigan, 227. 

Kentucky, emigration from. See Emi- 
gration. 

Kewanee, Ulinois, 212; character of 
colony, 212. 

Kil bourne, James, 179, 180. 

Kilkenny, New Hampshire, 145. 

Killingworth, Connecticut, 51, 257 n. 

Kimball, family name, 119 n. 

King George's War, 77, 87, 90. 

King Philip's War, 43, 56, 57, 58, 76. 

King William's War, 59. 

Kingfield, Maine, 141. 

Kingston, Massachusetts, 141. 

Kingston, New Hampshire, 61. 

Kingston, Pennsylvania, 121 n., 124 n. 

Kingston, Rhode Island, 33 n., 64 n. 

Kirkland, New York, 154, 159, 163. 

Kittery, Maine, 32, 104. 

Knapp, family name, 127. 

Kokomo, Indiana, 205. 

Lackaway district, Pennsylvania, 124 n., 
125. 

Lafayette, New York, 162. 

La Grange, Illinois, 216. 

La Grange County, Indiana, 201. 

Lake Champlain, 98, 153. 

Lake County, Indiana, 200, 203, 204. 

Lake County, Ohio, 179. 

Lake Erie, 174, 178. 

Lake Michigan, 209, 225, 2.36, 237. 

Lake Prairie, Indiana, "New Hamp- 
shire settlement" on. See Lowell, 
Indiana. 

Lakeville, Massachusetts, 62. 

Lancaster, Massachusetts, 30, 49, 58 n., 
61, 77 n. 

Lancaster, New Hampshire, 112. 

Lancaster, Ohio, 182 n. 

Lanesborough, Massachusetts, 143. 

La Porte County, Indiana, 201,202. 



Laud, William, Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, 44. 
Law, John, 81. 
Lawrence, Kansas, 247 n. 
Lebanon, Connecticut, 92, 93 n., 112, 

116, 124 n., 133, 146, 168 n., 176 n., 

201, 216 n. 
Lebanon, New Hampshire, 112, 167 n. 
Lebanon, Pennsylvania, 125 n. 
Lee, Maine, 145. 
Lee, Massachusetts, 109, 113 n. 
Leicester, Massachusetts, 78. 
Lenox, Massachusetts, 80. 
Lenox, Pennsylvania, 125 n. 
Leominster, Massachusetts, 227. 
Lewis County, New York, 158. 
Lexington, Massachusetts, 77 n. 
Leyden, Holland, 11. 
Liberty County, Georgia, 97. 
Liberty Party, The, 187. 
Licking County, Ohio, 188. 
Limerick, Maine, 231 n. 
Lincoln, Abraham, 270. 
Lincoln County, Maine, population in 

1764, 114 n. 
Linlithgow, Scotland, 176. 
Lisbon, Connecticut, 65. 
Litchfield, Connecticut, 92, 93 n., 101, 

llln., 142, 14.3, 257 n. 
Litchfield, New Hampshire, 89. 
Litchfield, Pennsylvania, 125 n. 
Litchfield County, Connecticut, 124, 

158, 182 n., 206. 
Little Compton, Rhode Island, 63, 91. 
Log-rolling, 8. 
London, England, 24. 
Londonderry, Ireland, 88. 
Londonderry, New Hampshire, 88, 96, 

114, 167 n., 240 n. 
Londonderry, Vermont, 115, 116. 
Long Island, 36, 52, 66, 67, 95, 110, 

116 n. 
Lorain Connty, Ohio, 185. 
Lord, Rev. Joseph, 68. 
Lovewell, Capt. John (also spelled 

Lovel), 86. 
Lovewell's War, 76 n., 86. 
Lowell, Indiana, 202. 
Lowell, Massachusetts, 143. 



292 



INDEX 



Lowell, Vermont, 143. 
Lowville, New York, 158. 
Ludlow, Vermont, 143, 199, 202. 
Lunenburg, Massachusetts, 78, 98, 145. 
Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, 131, 

151, 152. 
Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, 70 n. 
Lyman, General Phineas, 125, 126, 127, 

133, 176. 
Lyman, New Hampshire, 134. 
Lyman colony of Mississippi, 125-127, 

168 n., 176. 
Lyme, Connecticut, 109, 111, 112, 

124 n., 176 n. 
Lyme, New Hampshire, 112. 
Lynn, Massachusetts, 14, 15, 28, 81, 

32, 34. 

Machiaa, Maine, 216 n., 237. 
Mackinaw, Michigan, 222. 
Madawaska Plantation, Maine, 142. 
Madison, Wisconsin, 243, 244. 
Madison County, Illinois, 196, 206. 
Mahoning County, Ohio, 179. 
Maidstone, Vermont, 134. 
Maine, obstacles to settlement of, 87, 88, 

102 ; settlement of, see Settlement ; 

emigration from, see Emigration. 
Maine, quarrel over proposition for 

statehood, 264, 265, 266. 
Manchester, Maine, 114. 
Manchester, Massachusetts, 109 n. 
Manhattan Island, 35. 
Manlius, New York, 161. 
Manlius Academy, New York, 161. 
Mansfield, Connecticut, 60 n., 64, 112, 

115, 206. 
"Manual Labor School," at Oberlin, 

Ohio, 186. 
Maps, how made. Appendix A. 
Marblehead, Massachusetts, 14, 87. 
Marcellus, New York, 162, 163, 164. 
Marcy, New York, 160. 
Marietta, Ohio, 175, 176, 177, 178, 

182, 192, 230, 231 ; Congregational 

Church of, 175. 
Marietta College, Ohio, 176. 
Marlborough, Massachusetts, 31, 58 n., 

63 n., 77 n., 80. 



Marlborough, Vermont, 115. 

Marlow, New Hampshire, 112. 

Marshfield, Massachusetts, 13. 

Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, 29, 
36, 110, 141, 155. 

Massachusetts, 8, 9, 23, 33, 34, 73, 155, 
156, 157, 158 ; legislature of, 156 ; 
settlement of, see Settlement ; emi- 
gration from, see Emigration. 

Massachusetts Bay, 1. 

Massachusetts Bay Company, The, 15. 

Mayflower, The, 11. 

Maynard, Massachusetts, 58 n. 

Maysville, Kentucky, 182 n. 

McGregor, Iowa, 258 n. 

McKean County, Pennsylvania, 151. 

Meadville, Pennsylvania, 152. 

Medfield, Massachusetts, 49, 58 n., 65, 
78. 

Medford, Massachusetts, 15. 

Medina, New York, 232 n. 

Medina County, Ohio, 182, 185. 

Medway, Georgia, 96, 97. 

Meigs, Return Jonathan, 177. 

Mendon, Massachusetts, 49, 58 n., 65. 

Meriden, Connecticut, 64. 

Merrimac, Massachusetts, 49. 

Merrimac River, 83, 84, 89. 

Metamora, Illinois (first called Han- 
over), 211. 

Methodist Church, 6. 

Mexican War, The, cause of, 270. 

Miami University, Ohio, 189. 

Michigan, 147, 169 n. ; character of 
settlers, 224 ; early laws of, 223 ; 
governors of, 231, 232 ; lack of know- 
ledge concerning, before 1820, 221, 
222 ; settlement of, see Settlement. 

" Michigania," popular song of, about 
1837, 226, 227. 

Middle States, The, 9. 

Middleborough, Massachusetts, 58 n., 
177. 

Middlebury, Indiana, 200 n. 

Middlebury, Massachusetts, 93 n. 

Middlebury, Vermont, 129. 

Middlefield, Massachusetts, 161, 257 n. 

Middlesex, Vermont, 142. 

Middle ton, Massachusetts, 176 n. 



INDEX 



293 



Middletown, Connecticut, 90, 93 n., 115, 

127, 154, 176 n., 177. 
Middletown, New Hampshire, 113 n. 
Middletown, New Jersey, 67. 
Middletown, Rhode Island, 91 n. 
Milford, Connecticut, 25 n., 26, 53, 

66 n., 92. 
Milford, Massachusetts, 58 n. 
" Military Adventurers " Company, 

126, 127 n. 
Millbury, Massachusetts, 94 n. 
Mills, Prof. Caleb, 204, 205. 
Milton, Massachusetts, 68. 
Milton, Vermont, 245. 
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 236, 24.3. 
Milwaukee and Mississippi Railroad, 

The, 246 n. 
Minnesota, 8, 241, 247 n. 
Missionary Societies, Connecticut, 164 ; 

Hampshire, 164; Hopkinton (New 

Hampshire), 164. 
Mississippi River, The, 118, 182, 193, 

194, 196, 209, 236, 237. 
Mobile, Alabama, 168 n. 
Mobile Bay, Alabama, 9. 
Mohawk River, The, 157, 243. 
Mohawk Valley, The, 154, 174. 
Monkton, Vermont, 129. 
Monroe, Massachusetts, 140 n. 
Monroe, Michigan, 224 n., 228, 229. 
Monson, Massachusetts, 240 n. 
Montana, 7. 
Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, 70 

n. 
Monticello, Illinois, Female Seminary 

of, 218 n. 
Mormonism, 167. 
Morris, Colonel, 67. 
Morris, Robert, 156 n. 
Morris County, New Jersey, emigrants 

from, 144 n. 
Morristown, Illinois, 216. 
Morristown, Vermont, 144, 146. 
Mt. Clemens, Michigan, 224 n. 
Mt. Hope colony. The, of McLean 

County, Illinois, 213. 
Muddy River, Massachusetts. See 

Brookline. 
Muncy, Pennsylvania, 122 n. 



Muskingum Academy, Ohio, 176. 
Muskingum River, The, 174. 

Nantucket Island, 36, 114, 118 n., 128, 

155, 202. 
Narragansett Bay, 51. 
Narragansett Indians, 23. 
" Narragansett Townships," 83, 84, 86, 

89, 91 n. 
Nashaway, Massachusetts. See Lan- 
caster. 
Nashaway Company, The, 30. 
Nashua, New Hampshire, 57. 
Nashua River, Massachusetts, 30. 
Natchez, Mississippi, 9, 127, 168 n. 
Navigation Acts, 71. 
Needham, Massachusetts, 63 n. 
Neighborhoods, removal by, 155. See 

also Colonies. 
Nelson, New Hampshire, 227. 
Newark, New Jersey, 9, 53, 54, 67, 117, 

144, 146, 257 n. 
Newark, Ohio, 181 n. 
New Ashford, Massachusetts, 110. 
New Bedford, Massachusetts, 58 n. 
New Boston, New Hampshire, 89. 
New Braintree, Massachusetts, 85 n. 
Newbury, Massachusetts, 16, 25, 32, 54, 

84 n. 
Newbury, Vermont, 116; theological 

seminary of, 218. 
New Canaan, Connecticut, 199. 
New Chester, New Hampshire. See 

Hill. 
New Durham, New Hampshire, 113 n. 
New England, 3, 22, 46, 47, 56, 57, 67, 

77, 92, 96. See also different states. 
New England houses, 10, 160. 
New Fairfield, Connecticut, 103 n. 
Newfane, Vermont, 207. 
Newfield, New York, 162. 
New France, 102, 108. 
New Garden, North Carolina, 128. 
New Gloucester, Maine, 87. 
New Gorham, Maine, 84 n. 
New Hampshire, 9, 155 ; settlement 

of, see Settlement ; emigration from, 

see Emigration. 
New Hampton, New Hampshire, 218 n. 



294: 



INDEX 



New Hartford, Connecticut, 92. 
New Hartford, New York, 160. 
New Haven, Connecticut, 24, 25 n., 53, 
70, 93 n., 100, 109, 115, 133, 108 n., 
ISO, 202, 214 n. 
New Haven, Ohio, 185 n. 
New Jersey, 48, 52, 53, 54, 72, 111, 
116 n., 151, 153, 158, 178; settle- 
ment of, see Settlement ; emigration 
from, see Emigration. 
New Jersey, The College of. See 

Princeton University. 
New London, Connecticut, 27, 45, 64, 

93 n., 129 n. 
New Lyme, Ohio, 185 n. 
New Marlborough, Massachusetts, 80. 
New Milford, Connecticut, 143, 227. 
New Milford, Pennsylvania, 125 n. 
New Netherlaud Colony, The, 46, 47, 

48, 53. See also New York. 
New Plymouth, Massachusetts. See 

Plymouth. 
Newport, New Hampshire, 112, 216 n. 
Newport, Pennsylvania, 124 n. 
Newport, Rhode Island, 26, 46, 91. 
New Portland, Maine, 141. 
New Roxbury, Connecticut. See Wood- 
stock. 
New Shoreham, Rhode Island, 36. 
Newton, Ohio, 185 n. 
Newtown, Connecticut, 60 n., 65, 116. 
New Town, Pennsylvania, 70 n. 
Newtowne, Connecticut. See Hartford. 
Newtowne, Massachusetts. See Cam- 
bridge, 
New Vineyard, Maine, 141. 
New York, 8, 156 ; settlement of, see 
Settlement ; emigration from, see 
Emigration. 
New York Colony, The, 53. 
New York, New Haven and Hartford 

Railroad, The, 36 n. 
Niagara, New York, 168, 169. 
Niagara County, New York, 165. 
Nicolls, Colonel, 46. 
" Nine Partners' Tract," New York, 95, 

116, 129. 
"Nipmuek Country," The, 65. 
Noble County, Indiana, 201. 



Nonantum, Massachusetts, 68. 
Norfolk, Connecticut, 93 n., 216 n. 
Norfolk County, England, 14 n. 
Norfolk County, Massachusetts, 32. 
Norman, William, 68. 
Norridgewock, Maine, 114. 
Northampton, Massachusetts, 50, 58 n., 

m, 79, 80, 90, 110 n., 127, 164, 213, 

266. 
Northampton Colony, The, in La Salle 

County, Illinois, 213. 
North Carolina, 70 n. 
Northfield, Massachusetts, 50, 57, 58 n., 

90. 
Northfield, Minnesota, 187. 
Northfield, Ohio, 185 n. 
Northfield, Vermont, 143, 144. 
North Haven, Connecticut, 24 n. 
North Hero, Vermont, 143. 
North Killingwortli, Connecticut, 112. 
North Kingstown, Rhode Island. See 

Kingston. 
North Lyme, Connecticut, 176 n. 
Northwest, The, 8. 
Northwest Territory, The, 175, 208. 
Northwestern University, Illinois, 218. 
Norwalk, Connecticut, 27, 60 n., 93 n., 

178. 
Norwalk, Ohio, 178. 
Norwich, Connecticut, 9, 109, 117, 

121 n., 124 n., 162, 213, 227, 231. 
Norwich, Vermont, 115. 
Norwich Colony, The, in La Salle 

County, Illinois, 213. 
Nova Scotia, 59, 77, 86, 118 n. 

Oberlin, Ohio, 174, 185, 186, 187, 188, 
233. 

Occupations in New England, 270, 271. 

Occupations of settlers, 12, 13, 14, 15, 
16, 18, 19, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 
33, 55, 56, 63, 64, 71, 72, 100, 101, 
153, 161, 166, 183, 184, 198, 206, 207, 
208. 

Oglethorpe, James, 96. 

Ohio, 147, 222 ; settlement of, see Settle- 
ment ; emigration from, see Emi- 
gration. 

" Ohio fever," The, 183. 



INDEX 



295 



Ohio Land Company, The, 175. 

Ohio Purchase, The, 178 n. 

Ohio River, The, 174, 175, 178, 182, 

196, 225. 
Ohio Valley, The, 108. 
Oldham, John, 18, 19 n. 
" Old Brookfield Road," The, 142. 
" Old Connecticut Path," The, 31, 97. 
Oliver, Capt. Robert, 177. 
Olivet College, Michigan, 187, 232, 233, 

234. 
Omaha Railroad system. The, 246 n. 
" Oneida community," The, 167. 
Oneida County, New York, 154, 158, 

159, 163. 
Onondaga County, New York, 161. 
Orange County, New York, 96, 125, 151, 

200 n. 
Orange County, Vermont, 202. 
Ordinance of 1787, The, 173. 
Oregon, 247 n. 

Orford, New Hampshire, 112. 
Orland, Indiana, 202. 
Orland Academy, Indiana, 202. 
Orleans, Massachusetts, 28 n. 
Orwell, Ohio, 185 n. 
Orwell, Vermont, 161 n. 
Otis, Massachusetts, 80. 
Otsego, Michigan, Normal School of, 

232. 
Ottawa, Illinois, 214. 
Otter Creek, Vermont, 98 n. 
Ovid, New York, 197 n. 
Owego, New York, 163. 
Oxford, Massachusetts, 63, 65, 109 n. 
Oxford University, Ohio, 189. 
Oyster River, New Hampshire. See 

Durham. 

Pacific Coast, 10. 

Page, John, 211. 

Paine, Gen. Edward, 179. 

Painesville, Ohio, 179. 

Palfrey, John G., on population, 70. 

Palmer, Massachusetts, 78 n., 79 n., 

94 n. 
Palmer, Michigan, 224 n. 
Palmyra, Maine, 141 n. 
Palmyra, Ohio, 179. 



Panic of 1837, causes of, 269 ; efEect 
on settlement, 183, 210, 213, 226, 237. 

Panton, Vermont, 129, 142. 

Paris, New York, 257 n. 

Parks, family name, 119 n. 

Parliament, British, 7 ; the Long Parlia- 
ment, 43 ; legislation by, 100, 105. 

Parson, Joseph, 79. 

Patchin, Deacon, 162. 

Pawlet, Vermont, 167 n., 186. 

Peacham, Vermont, 129 n. 

Pelham, Massachusetts, 78 n., 110 n. 

Pemaquid, Maine, 14. 

Pembroke, Massachusetts, 110 n. 

Pembroke, New Hampshire (first 
called Suncook), 89. 

Pennsylvania, settlement of, see Settle- 
ment ; emigration from, see Emigra- 
tion. 

Pennsylvanian, The, 8. 

Penobscot County, Maine, 145, 202. 

Penobscot River, The, 35, 113. 

"Pequot Country," The, 27. 

Pequot Indians, The, 23, 24. 

" Pequot Path," The, 35, 36 n. 

Pequot War, The, 23, 24. 

Perrin, John, 227, 228. 

Peru, Massachusetts, 110, 111. 

Petersham, Massachusetts, 90 n. 

Phelps, family name, 127. 

Phelps, Captain Matthew, 126. 

Phelps, Oliver, 156. 

Phelps-Gorham tract. The, 156, 172. 

Philip, King, 43, 56, 57, 58. 

Phillips, Rev. Mr., 19 n. 

Phillips Exeter Academy, founded, 132, 

Phillipse patent, New York, 95. 

Phips, Captain, 141 n. 

Pierce, Dr. George E., 189. 

Pierce, Rev. John D., 232. 

Piei-mont, New Hampshire, 144. 

Piscataqua, Maine, 14. 

Piscataqua, New Hampshire, 54. 

Piscataqua River, 88, 90. 

Piscataquis County, Maine, 145. 

Piscataway, New Jersey, 54. 

Pittsburgh, New Hampshire, 140. 

Pittsfield, Illinois, 211, 215 n. 

Pittsfield, Maine, 141. 



296 



INDEX 



Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 80, 143 n., 
211, 215 n. 

Pittsfield, Vermont, 143 n. 

Pittsford, Vermont, 116. 

Pittston, Pennsylvania, 121 n., 124 n- 

Plainfield, Connecticut, 60 n., 65, 93 d., 
112, 124 n., 160, 244. 

Plainfield, New Hampshire, 112, 146. 

Plaistow, New Hampshire, 144. 

Plymouth, Connecticut, 121 n., 154, 
178. 

Plymouth, England, 11. 

Plymouth, Massachusetts, 10, 11, 20 n., 
22, 23, 49, 84 u., 121 n., 155, 177, 181 ; 
character of town, 12. 

Plymouth, New Hampshire, 112. 

Plymouth, Ohio, 178. 

Plymouth, Pennsylvania, 121, 124 n. 

Plymouth Church, Indianapolis, Indi- 
ana, 205. 

Plymouth Company in England, The, 
19. 

Plymouth County, Massachusetts, 
112 n., 114. 

Plymouth Trading Company, The, 18. 

Plympton family, The, 49. 

Pomfret, Connecticut, 19 n., 65 n., 90 n. 

Pomfret, Vermont, 116. 

Pontiac, Michigan, 224 n. 

Pope, Nathaniel, 209. 

Poplin, New Hampshire, 167 n. 

Population, 56, 67, 69, 70, 89, 90, 91, 
92, 94, 95, 96, 113, 114, 117, 119, 120 
140, 141, 145, 152, 168, 169, 193, 194, 
196, 200 n., 216 n., 217, 222, 224, 
226, 237, 271, Appendix B. 

Population, nativity of. Tables, Appen- 
dix B. 

Population of New England, decrease 
in nineteenth century, 271, 272. 

Portage County, Ohio, 179, 181. 

Portland, Maine, 14, 57, 86, 182. 

Port Lawrence, Michigan, 224 n. 

Portsmouth, England, 117. 

Portsmouth, New Hampshire (first 
called Strawberry Bank), 14, 32, 
33 n., 61, 89, 118 n. 

Portsmouth, Rhode Island, 33. 

Poultney, Vermont, 151. 



Prairie church. The, 244. 

Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, 223 n., 
237. 

Prairies, suspicion concerning, in early 
settlers, 184, 214, 215. 

Presbyteries, Cayuga, 163 ; Tioga, 163 ; 
Cleveland, 187. 

Presbyteries, establishment in New 
York, 163. 

Presbyterian Church, The, 6, 163, 164, 
234. 

Prescott, Massachusetts. See Lancas- 
ter. 

Preston, Connecticut, 64, 115, 146, 231. 

Preston, Pennsylvania, 125 n. 

Presumpscot River, 83. 

Princeton University, 54. 

Proclamation of 1763, 118. 

Proprietors and settlers, quarrels be- 
tween, 65, 66, 133, 134, 135, 136, 262, 
263. 

Protection for frontier, 60, 60 n. 

Protectorate, The, 43. 

Providence, Pennsylvania, 124 n. 

Providence, Rhode Island, 22, 33, 46, 
91, 144, 146, 213, 245. 

Provincetown, Massachusetts, 62. 

Prussia, schools of, 233 ; Cousin's re- 
port on, 233. 

Public improvements, 97, 98. 

Public land, 1, 2, 5, 171, 172, 173, 174, 
188. 

Public Schools in Indiana, 204, 205. 

Puritan, The, 17. 

Putnami, Connecticut, 36 n. 

Putnam, General Rufus, 126, 175, 176. 

Putnam County, New York, 95. 

Putney, Vermont, 210. 

Pynchon, John, 50. 

Pynchon, WUliam, 21, 180. 

Quakers, The, 127, 128, 199. 
Quebec, territory of, 118. 
Queen Anne's War, 59. 
Quilting-bees, 8. 
Quincy, Illinois, 207. 
Quincy, Massachusetts, 14. 
Quinnipiack, Counecticut, see New 
Haven. 



INDEX 



291 



Bacine, Wisconsin, 240. 

Bacine County, Wisconsin, 240, 269. 

Radicalism, 2, 5, 24, 25, 27. See also 
Frontier, character of. 

Bandolph, Vermont, 129. 

Randolph County, Indiana, 199. 

Ravenna, Ohio, 179. 

Reaction in New England against cleri- 
cal control, 267. 

Reading, Massachusetts, 68. 

Reed, John, of Boston, Massachusetts, 
103 n. 

Rehohoth, Massachusetts, 57, 109 u., 
167 n. 

Representation, actual, 128; virtual, 
129. 

Republican Party, The, 187, 230, 270. 

Restoration of 1660, The, 43, 45, 53. 

Revolution, The American, causes, 128, 
129 ; effect on the frontier, 129, 130, 
131. 

Rice, Harvey, 189. 

Richmond, Indiana, 201. 

Richmond, Massachusetts, 110, 257 n., 
264. 

Richmond, New Hampshire, 112, 167 n. 

Richmond, New York, 155. 

Richmond, Rhode Island, 50, 112. 

Ridgefield, Connecticut, 60 n. 

Riggs, John, of Derby, Connecticut, 92. 

Ripon College, Wisconsin, 187. 

Robinson, John, 203, 204. 

Robinson, Capt. Samuel, 116. 

Rochester, New Hampshire, 89. 

Rochester, New York, 159 n. 

Rock River Valley, Wisconsin, The, 
237, 242. 

Rockford, niinois, 209, 210; conven- 
tion of 1840 in, 209, 210. 

Rockford College, Illinois, 218 n. 

Rockingham, Vermont, 90 n. 

Rockingham County, North Carolina, 
199. 

Rockland County, North Carolina, 199. 

Rockton, Illinois, 213. 

Rocky Mountains, The, 1, 194. 

Routes into Illinois, 207. 

Routes into Michigan, 224, 225, 226, 
227, 228, 230. 



Routes into New York about 1778 to 

1800, 153, 154, 156, 157. 
Routes into Ohio, 174, 182 n. 
Routes of settlement into Wisconsin, 

236, 237, 238. 
Rowley, Massachusetts, 28, 114. 
Roxbury, Massachusetts, 15, 21, 26, 65, 

259 n. 
Roxbury, Vermont, 146. 
Royalist party. The, 43. 
Royalston, Massachusetts, 112 n., 228, 

240 n. 
Rumney, New Hampshire, 144. 
Rupert, Vermont, 116. 
Rutland, Massachusetts, 77, 78, 90 n., 

143, 176, 176 n. 
Rutland, Vermont, 216 n. 
Rutland County, Vermont, 230. 
Rye, New Hampshire, 31. 
Rye, New York, 70. 
Ryswick, The peace of, 59, 76. 

Saco, Maine, 14, 85. 

Saco River, The, 83. 

Sagadahoc, Maine, 14. 

Sagadahoc territory, The, 88. 

Sag Harbor, Long Island, 95. 

Saginaw, Michigan, 224 n. 

St. Anthony's Falls, 126 n. 

St. George, Maine, 14. 

St. Johnsbury, Vermont, 144. 

St. Lawrence County, New York, 161 n. 

St. Stephens, Alabama, 168 n. 

Salem, Massachusetts, 14,15, 79n.,82, 

175. 
Salem, Pennsylvania, 125 n. 
Salisbury, Connecticut, 93 n., 116, 257 n. 
Salisbury, England, 28. 
Salisbury, Massachusetts, 28, 31. 
Salisbury, Vermont, 116. 
Sandisfield, Massachusetts, 80, 167 n., 

240 n. 
Sandwich, Massachusetts, 28, 84 n., 109. 
Sangamon County, Illinois, 214 n. 
Santiago de Cuba, 108 n. 
Saybrook, Connecticut, 21, 45, 66, 69, 

176 n., 257 n. 
Scarborough, Maine, 86. 
Schenectady, New York, 160. 



INDEX 



School companies in Ohio, 189. 

Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, 151. 

" Scioto Company," The, of 1787, 179 
n. ; of 1802, 179. 

Scituate, Massachusetts, 13, 28, 64, 84 
n., 110. 

Scituate, Rhode Island, 64, 91 n., 168 n., 
228, 233. 

Scotch-Irish, The, 78, 87, 88, 96, 114, 
151. 

Searsburgh, Vermont, 145. 

Sebec, Maine, 141. 

Seekonk, Massachusetts, 57. 

Settlement, mode of, in Illinois, 206, 
207, 208 ; in Indiana, 198, 203, 204 ; 
in New Jersey, 55 n. ; in New York, 
153, 155, 15G, 157, 160; in Ohio, 174, 
175, 177, 179, 184, 186. 

Settlement, of Connecticut, 18, 19, 20, 
24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 51, 52, 64, 65, 66, 
91, 92, 93,94, 102, 103, 109, 111, 251, 
252 ; of Georgia, 96, 97 ; of Illinois, 
196, 197, 206,207, 208, 209,210, 211, 
212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 
254, 255 ; of Indiana, 128, 196, 197, 
198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 
206, 254, 255 ; of Long Island, 33, 

34, 52, 95, 96, 251, 252, 257; of 
Maine, 14, 32, 33, 50, 57, 60, 61, 83, 
84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 102, 103, 109, 113, 
114, 131, 141, 142 n., 171, 251, 252, 
253, 254; of Massachusetts, 11, 12, 

13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 28, 
29, 30, 31, 49, 50, 57, 58, 61, 62, ()3, 
77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 103, 
108, 109, 110, 111, 140,251,252, 257; 
of Michigan, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 
226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 
234, 235, 255; of Mississippi, 125, 
126, 127, 253; of New Hampshire, 

14, 31, 32, 50, 57, 61, 82, 83, 84, 88, 
89, 90, 109, 111, 112, 113, 131, 140, 
171, 251, 252, 253, 254, 257, 258; of 
New .Jersey, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 66, 67, 
95, 251, 252, 257 ; of New York, 34, 

35, 66, 95, 96, 1.53, 154, 155, 156, 157, 
158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 166, 167, 168, 
169, 252, 253, 257 ; of North Caro- 
lina, 127, 128, 253 ; of Ohio, 128, 171, 



172, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 
181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 
191, 192, 193, 194, 253, 254, 255, 257, 
258 ; of Pennsylvania, 118, 119, 120, 
121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 131, 150, 151, 
152, 253, 257, 258 ; of Rhode Island, 
22, 33, 50, 51, 58, 63, 64, 90, 91, 251, 
252 ; of South Carolina, 68, 96 ; of 
Tennessee, 128 ; of Vermont, 90, 109, 
115, 116, 117,131, 142, 143, 144,145, 
171, 251, 252, 253, 254, 257, 258; of 
Wisconsin, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 
241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 255. 

Settlement after 1781 in New England, 
146, 147, 171. 

Settlement, r^sum^ of, 250-259. 

Settlers in New England, character, 3, 
6, 36, 37, 38, 39 ; in Connecticut, 146 ; 
in Illinois, 207, 208 ; in Indiana, 198, 
199 ; in Maine, 147 ; in New Hamp- 
shire, 147 ; in New York, 160, 161, 
162, 163, 164, 166, 167, 168, 169; in 
Ohio, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 
180, 181, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 
191, 192 ; in Vermont, 146, 147. 

Sevier County, Tennessee, 128, 199. 

Shaftsbury, Vermont, 115, 167 n. 

Sharon, Connecticut, 93 n., 216 n. 

Shay's Rebellion, 266, 267. 

Sheboygan, Wisconsin, 243. 

Sheepscot, Maine, 14. 

Sheffield, Massachusetts, 79. 

Shelburne, Lord, 126 n. 

Shelburne, Vermont, 143. 

Sheldon, family name, 127. 

Sheldon, Vermont, 143. 

Shelter Island, 34. 

Shepard, Rev. Thomas, 20 n. 

Sherborn, Massachusetts, 63 n. 

Sherman, Connecticut, 201. 

Shipherd, Rev. John, 174, 186. 

Shirley, Massachusetts, 109. 

Shoreham, Vermont, 227. 

Shrewsbury, New Jersey, 52, 53. 

Shrewsbury, Pennsylvania, 125 n. 

Shurtleff, Benjamin, 218 n. 

Shnrtleff College, Illinois, 218 n. 

Sibley, Cyrus, 168 n. 

Sibley, Solomon, 230. 



INDEX 



299 



Sills, family name, 124 n. 

Simsbury, Connecticut, 58, 60 n., 93 n., 

94, 111. 
Six Nations, The, 119. 
Smith, Azariah, 161. 
Smith, Joseph, founder of Mormonism, 

167. 
Smithfield, Pennsylvania, 125 n. 
Smithfield, Rhode Island, 91 n., 115, 

116. 
Somerset, Vermont, 129 n. 
Somersetshire, England, 8. 
South, The, 9. 

Southampton, Long Island, 9, 26, 27,34. 
South Berwick, Maine, 14. 
Southbury, Connecticut, 58, 182 n. 
South Carolina, 68. See also under Em- 
igration and Settlement. 
South Hadley, Massachusetts, 79. 
Southold, Long Island, 34. 
South Reading, Massachusetts, 28 n. 
Speculation in land, 30, 81, 82, 83, 84, 

99, 100, 101, 156, 171, 172, 173,183. 
Spencer, Massachusetts, 232. 
Spooner, Senator John C, 245, 246. 
Springfield, Massachusetts, 21, 22, 49, 

58, 127. 
Springfield, Missouri, 187. 
Springfield, New Jersey, 67. 
Springport, New York, 232 n. 
Sproat, Col. Ebenezer, 177. 
"Squatters' Union," The, of Lake 

County, Indiana, 203, 204 ; of Du- 

Page County, Illinois, 212. 
Stamford, Connecticut, 27, 227. 
Stamford, New York, 161. 
Starbuck, family name, 199 n. 
Starbuck, William, 128. 
Steamboat navigation, rise of, 222, 223. 
Steuben County, Indiana, 200, 202. 
Stewart, Philo, 186. 
Stockbridge, Massachusetts, 257 n. 
Stocker, John, 202. 
Stockholm, New York, 161 n. 
Stoddard, New Hampshire, 112. 
Stonington, Connecticut, 64, 143, 244. 
Stonington, Illinois, 212. 
Story, Rev. Daniel, 177. 
Stoughton, Massachusetts, 177. 



Stow, Massachusetts, 58 n., 62, 64. 

Stow, Ohio, 192 n. 

Strafford, Vermont, 116. 

Stratford, Connecticut, 27, 52, 58, 60 n., 

64, Q6 n., 168 n. 
Stratton, Vermont, 143. 
Strawberry Bank, New Hampshire. 

See Portsmouth. 
Strickland, John, 55. 
Strong, Benjamin, 197 n. 
Sturbridge, Massachusetts (first called 

New Medfield), 78, 90 n. 
Stuyvesant, Governor Peter, 53. 
Success, New Hampshire, 145. 
Sudbury, Massachusetts, 28, 31, 35, 49, 

63 n., 68, 77 n. 
Sudbury Marsh, The, 30, 
Suffield, Connecticut, 80, 95, 111, 115, 

127, 142. 
Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 201. 
Sullivan, General, campaign in Wyo- 
ming Valley, 130, 150. 
Sunderland, Massachusetts, 240 n. 
Surrey County, England, 25. 
Susquehanna Company, 118, 119, 120, 

121, 122, 123, 125, 151. 
Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, 

151. 
Susquehanna River, Pennsylvania, 120, 

123, 153, 1.55, 157. 
Sutton, Massachusetts, 94 n., 110 n., 

112 n. 
Sutton, Vermont, 144. 
Swain, famUy name, 199 n. 
Swain, Elihu, 128. 
Swansey, Rhode Island, 56. 
Swanton, Vermont, 143, 146. 
Swanton Falls, Vermont, 216 n. 
Swanzey, New Hampshire, 89. 
Switzerland County, Indiana, 198. 
Sylvan Township, Michigan, 228. 
" Syrames Purchase," The, 178 n. 

Tabor College, Iowa, 187. 
Talmadge, Ohio, 192 n. 
Taunton, Massachusetts, 23. 
Tazewell County, Illinois, 211, 212, 213. 
Tecumseh, Indian chieftain, 222. 
Teoumseh, Nebraska, 258 n. 



300 



INDEX 



Temple, Maine, 141. 
Tennessee, 126 ; settlement of, see Set- 
tlement ; emigration from, see Emi- 
gration. 
Texas, settlement and annexation, 269, 

270. 
Thetford, Vermont, 116. 
Thomas, family name, 119 n. 
Thomas, Rev. Isaiah, 152. 
Thomaston, Maine, 87 n. 
Threshing in the West, 8. 
Tinmouth, Vermont, 116. 
Tioga County, Pennsylvania, 151, 152. 
Tioga Point, New York, 153. 
Tioga Eiver, The, 151, 152. 
Tisbury, Massachusetts, 84 n. 
Tisdale, Nathaniel, 132 n. 
Tiverton, Rhode Island, 63, 91, 177. 
Tolland, Connecticut, 79 n., 93 n., 109. 
Tolland, Massachusetts, 145, 
Topsham, Maine, 87. 
Torrington, Connecticut, 92, 93, 201. 
Town-meeting, The, 33, 34, 37, 38, 45, 
46, 47, 48, 73, 13G ; in Connecticut, 
20, 37, 38, 45, 65 ; in Illinois, 217, 
218 ; in Indiana, 206 ; in Long Island, 
34, 37, 47 ; in Maine, 32, 33, 38 ; in 
Massachusetts, 10, 12, 13, 17, 20, 37, 
38, 46 ; in Michigan, 10, 234, 235 ; in 
New Hampshire, 32, 38 ; in New Jer- 
sey, 54 ; in New York, 47, 48, 164, 
165 ; in Ohio, 190, 191 ; in Pennsyl- 
vania, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125; in 
Rhode Island, 46 ; in Wisconsin, 238, 
239. 
Town-meeting, difFerence between 
Michigan and New England, 235, 236. 
Town officers in New York, 165, 191. 
Township board in Michigan, 235, 236. 
Township system in Wisconsin, 238, 

239. 
Tracey, family name, 119 n., 124 n. 
Trade and commerce, 3. 
Trade and Plantations, Lords of, 70. 
" Trail " to Lancaster, The, 36. 
" TraU" to Springfield, The, 35. 
Tremont, Illinois, 211, 212. 
Trinity College, Connecticut, 233. 
Troy, New York, 117, 153. 



Troy, Wisconsin, 244. 
Truax's, Michigan, 224 n. 
True, Dr. Jabez, 177. 
Truro, Massachusetts, 62. 
Tunbridge, Vermont, 129 n., 240 n. 
Tupper, Gen. Benjamin, 175, 177. 
Turner, Professor Frederick J., 2 n., 

270 n. 
Twining, William, 70 n. 
Tyler, family name, 119 n. 
Tyng, Jonathan, 57. 
Tyngsborough, Massachusetts, 49, 62. 
Tyringham, Massachusetts, 80. 

Unadilla, New York, 153. 

Union, Connecticut, 79 n. 

Union, Pennsylvania, 125 n. 

University of Ohio, The, 176. 

Utica, New York, 158. 

Utrecht, Peace of, 59, 76, 81, 91, 101. 

Varnum, James, 177. 

Vassalborough, Maine, 114. 

Venango County, Pennsylvania, 151. 

Vergennes, Vermont, 116. 

Vermont, 8, 9, 88 n., 135, 136, 155, 
157, 160, 167, 168 n. ; settlement of, 
see Settlement ; emigration from, see 
Emigration. 

Vermontville, Michigan, 228, 229, 230. 

Vermontville Colony, The. See Ver- 
montville, Michigan. , 

Vernon, Vermont, 90. 

Verona, New York, 257 n. 

Victory, Vermont, 145. 

Vincennes, Indiana, 196. 

Virginia, 30, 178 n. ; emigration from, 
see Emigration. 

Virginian, The, 8. 

Voluntown, Connecticut, 124 n. 

Wabash College, Indiana, 204, 205. 

Wabash River, Indiana, The, 197 n. 

Wabash and Erie Canal, The, in In- 
diana, 203 n. 

Wadsworth, James, on emigration to 
the " Genesee country," 156, 157. 

Waldo, General, heirs of , 113. 

Waldoborough, Maine, 87 n., 113. 



INDEX 



301 



Wales, Massachusetts, 79 n, 
Wallace, Sir James, 177 n. 
Wallingford, Connecticut, 24 n., 51, 

58, 64, 80, 93 n.. Ill n. 
Wallingford, Vermont, 116. 
Walworth County, Wisconsin, 244. 
" Wanderlust " of Anglo-Saxon, 4. 
War of the Austrian Succession, The, 

102. 
War of the Palatinate, The, 59. 
War of the Spanish Succession, The, 

59. 
War of 1812, The, 268. 
Ware, Massachusetts, 79, 103 n. 
Wareham, Massachusetts, 62. 
Warren, Connecticut, 93 n., 168 n. 
Warren, Maine, 87 n. 
Warren, New Hampshire, 134. 
Warren, Pennsylvania, 125 n. 
Warren, Rhode Island, 63, 91. 
Warren County, Pennsylvania, 151. 
Warsaw, New York, 167 n. 
Warwick, Rhode Island, 33, 46, 58, 

177. 
Washington, George, 108. 
Washington College, Connecticut. See 

Trinity College. 
Washington County, Indiana, 198. 
Washington County, Maine, 145. 
Washtenaw County, Micliigan, 228. 
Waterbury, Connecticut, 58, 60 n., 143, 

161. 
Waterbury, Vermont, 143. 
Waterford, Maine, 114. 
Watertown, Connecticut. See Wethers- 
field. 
Watertown, Massachusetts, 15, 55. 
Wayne, Anthony, 226. 
Wayne County, Indiana, 199, 201. 
Wayne County, Pennsylvania, 119 n., 

152. 
Weare, New Hampshire, 112. 
Weathersfield, Vermont, 115. 
Weavers, English, 28. 
Webster, Massachusetts, 140 n. 
Webster-Ashburton Treaty, The, 140. 
Weed, family name, 127. 
Wellfleet, Massachusetts, 28 n. 
Wells, Deacon Asa, 145. 



Wells, Maine, 32, 33. 

Wellsborough, Pennsylvania, 152 n. 

Wentworth, Governor, of New Hamp- 
shire, 111. 

Westborough, Massachusetts, 176 n. 

West Bridgewater, Massachusetts, 202. 

Westchester, New York, 35, 66. 

Westchester County, New York, 35, 
66. 

Westerly, Rhode Island, 50, 58. 

West Greenwich, Rhode Island, 51. 

" Western Reserve," The, 174, 178 n., 
179, 181, 182, 184. 

Western Reserve College, Ohio. See 
Western Reserve University. 

Western Reserve University, The, 
Cleveland, Ohio, 10, 189, 190. 

Westfield, Massachusetts, 79, 196, 

257 n. 

Westfield, Pennsylvania, 125 n. 
Westfield, Vermont, 143, 144. 
West Florida, the Governor of, 127. 
West Florida, the territory of, 118. 
Westford, Massachusetts, 240 n, 
Westford, Vermont, 143. 
West Hartford, Connecticut, 80. 
West Indies, The, 71. 
West Jersey. See New Jersey. 
Westminster, Massachusetts, 134, 135. 
Westminster, Vermont, 90, 144, 227. 
Westmoreland, New York, 257 n. 
Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, 124, 130. 
West River, Vermont, 98 n. 
West Springfield, Massachusetts, 158. 
Wethersfield, Connecticut, 9, 18, 19, 

26, 27, 28, 51, 55, 80, 104, 115, 127, 

142, 202, 212. 
Wethersfield, Illinois, 216. 
Wethersfield colony. The, in Illinois. 

See Kewanee. 
Weybridge, Vermont, 227. 
Weymouth, Massachusetts, 14, 49, 141, 

258 n. 

Wheeling, West Virginia, 182 n. 
Wheelock, Rev. Eleazar, 133. 
Wheelwright, Rev. John, 31, 32. 
Whig Party, The, 186, 202, 230, 239 n. 
Whipple, Abraham, 177. 
Whitcomb, Asa, 117 n. 



302 



INDEX 



Whitcomb, James, 203. 

White, Dr. Horace, 241. 

White, Judge Hugh, 154, 260. 

White River, Indiana. See Wabash 
River. 

Whitefield, New Hampshire, 140. 

Whitesboro, New York, 155, 260. 

Whitestown, New York. See Whites- 
boro. 

Whitfield Company, The, 25. 

Whiting, Vermont, 129. 

Whitman College, Washington, 9, 
247 n. 

Whitney, Prof. H. M., 240 n., 241, 243. 

Wilbraham, Massachusetts; 168 n. 

Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania, 120 n., 121, 
124 n. 

Wilkinson, Jemima, 166. 

Willamette Valley, Washington, 10, 
247 n. 

Williams, Roger, 22, 23. 

Williamsburg, Massachusetts, 110. 

Williarastown, Massachusetts, 80, 108, 
143, 240 n. 

WUlimantic, Connecticut. 36 n. 

Willington, Connecticut, 91, 92. 

Williston, Vermont, 143. 

Winchendon, Massachusetts, 98. 

Winchester, Connecticut, 92, 111. 

Winchester, New Hampshire, 90 n., 
216 n. 

Windham, Connecticut, 60 n., 64, 79 n., 
93 n., 133. 

Windham, Maine (first called New 
Marblehead), 87. 

Windham, Ohio, 181. 

Windham, Pennsylvania, 125 n. 

Windham County, Connecticut, emi- 
gration from, 201, 2.58 n. 

Windham County, Vermont, 202. 

Windsor, Connecticut, 19, 20, 51, 58, 
66, 92, 93, 111, 127. 

Windsor, Massachusetts, 110, 111. 

Windsor, Ohio, 185 n. 

Windsor, Vermont, 160, 203. 

Windsor County, Vermont, 227. 

Winnebat^o County, Illinois, 209, 213. 

Winnicumet, New Hampshire. See 
Hampton. 



" Winter privileges," 94. 

Winthrop, Fitz-John, 73 n. 

Winthrop, John, Jr., 21, 27, 45, 46. 

Winthrop, Judge, 152. 

Winthrop-Cotton administration, The, 
18. 

Wiscasset, Maine, 57. 

Wisconsin, 6, 147, 109 n., 209, 210; 
character of, 246, 247 ; Vermont emi- 
grants in, Appendix C ; settlement 
of, see Settlement ; school system of, 
243 ; relation to Michigan school sys- 
tem, 243. 

Wisconsin Central Railroad, The, 
246 n. 

Wisconsin River Valley, The, 237. 

Woburn, Massachusetts, 29, 64, 65. 

Wolcott, family name, 127. 

Wolcott, George, 201. 

Wolcott, Oliver, 151 n. 

Wolcott, Roger, of Windsor, Connecti- 
cut, 92, 101. 

Wolcott, New Hampshire, 158. 

Wolcottville, Indiana, 201. 

Wolf eborough. New Hampshire, 113 n. 

" Wolf eborough Road," The, 142. 

Woodbridge, Connecticut, 24 n. 

Woodbridge, New Jersey, 54. 

Woodbridge, William, 231. 

Woodbury, Connecticut, 52, 58, 60 n., 
64, 94, 111 n., 129 n. 

Woodstock, Connecticut, 05, 80, 227, 
258 n. 

Woodward, Judge, 223 n., 233 n. 

Woonsocket, Rhode Island, 50. 

Worcester, Massachusetts, 50, 58 n., 
62, 90 n., 112 n. 

Worcester, Vermont, 144. 

Worcester County, Massachusetts, 77, 
78, 80, 103, 143, 201. 

Worthington, Massachusetts, 143, 146. 

Worthiugton, Minnesota, 247 n. 

Worthington, Ohio, 179, 180. 

Worthington College, Ohio, 180. 

Wright, Sir James, Governor of 
Georgia, 97. 

Wyoming Valley, Pennsylvania, 120, 

130, 150; destruction in 1778, 130, 

131, 151, 152, 153, 155. 



INDEX 



303 



Yale College (now Yale University), 
69, 133, 150, 189, 190, 216, 242. 

Yale University. See Yale College. 

Yarmouth, Massachusetts, 28 n., 54, 
84 n. 

York, Maine, 14, 113. 



York County, Maine, 33, 114 n. 
Yorkshire, England, 8, 26, 28. 
Young, Brigham, 167. 

Zane, Ebenezer, 182 n. 
" Zane's Trace," 182 n. 



4 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 



/ 

U . S . A 



W 83 




IBBKKEEPER 

:SERVATION TECHNOLOGIES. LP. 
Thnm<inn Park Hhup 



PRESERVATION TECHNOLOGIES. LP. 
^ \ ^ 111 Thomson Park Drive 

'f [^.. . \ Cranberry Township. PA 16066 

(724) 779-21 1 1 











-^^-^^^ 







-Jy" . 



r 










"•^0^ 

«! 

K-f 






V .♦^^ 



<. ♦vT7;« -O*" '^^ -^.7* A 






'0^ .*i';,L% '^^o 















1*^ • 






^.- *^^-\ \^P/ /-"^^^ ^-J^W' .•^'% \^|^/ /--^ 












• IjJifB (SKI w^ UH iruc 'SCO ■ • yss^n ^BEk. • V * j*^^* nrM' . ' • SSCi.l ^B 






f\> . t • o . 









